


Fortunate Chance

by Aiguuu



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff, Mental Health Issues, Romance, Slow Burn, probably a very
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 100,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24220570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiguuu/pseuds/Aiguuu
Summary: 17 years old, uprooted from her home with her mother, Bella returns to Forks – almost 10 years after leaving the rural town. Apparently, there were sides of the overcast hamlet she had never been aware of… and her arrival sets in motion events that she never could have anticipated.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Bella Swan, Carlisle Cullen & Esme Cullen, Emmett Cullen & Rosalie Hale, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 280
Kudos: 418





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> I began writing this story in February 2019 – and after many, maaany rewrites and a lot of writer’s block to overcome, I’m finally ready to publish it. I will try to stick to an updating schedule of twice a month. A lot of the story is written with just editing left to do, but I still want to leave time and space to iron out details of future chapters, or just depending on your – the readers’ – feedback. As things are standing now this work will contain some 20-ish chapters, but this could change. It’s also possible that the title of the work can come to change later – this work had a very simple temporary title for its first 13.5 months and I only properly named it a month, or so, back. Not sure how I feel about it.
> 
> Anyways! Enough rambling! Here’s the first chapter:

“Bella, honey…?”

“What is it, mom?”

Bella couldn’t keep the bite out of her words. She was tired in more ways than physically; the last three weeks had been the most intense in her life – culminating in Renée’s hospitalization three days earlier.

“I’m sorry. You, I—You know I love you, right?” Renée said quietly.

To Bella her mother’s voice was sleepy and mellow, uncharacteristically so considering the past three weeks. Bella supposed she’d been forced back on meds by the staff at the ward.

“Mom, it’s okay. I know that,” she sighed.

And Bella did know that, but she couldn’t find it in herself to return the sentiment just then. Deep down she knew that Renée couldn’t really help how things had turned out; she was sick and needed help that Bella couldn’t offer her, but she couldn’t help but feel betrayed. The person who was supposed to take care of her, her primary caregiver, had gone off the rails completely – even if that was by events outside of either one’s control – to the point that Bella had instead been forced to be the caregiver for them both.

It wasn’t the first time that had happened, but her mother’s manic episodes had never been as pronounced before. Thankfully Bella’s maturity and age made the lack of a fully lucid caregiver less of a practical problem and more of an inconvenience.

No matter how much she loved her mother and couldn’t get the words out, and how glad she was that Renée was okay, she just wanted to hang up the call and go to bed – the chaos that had surrounded Renée and her the past few weeks hadn’t left much room for sleep for either of them.

Besides, Bella was technically still a junior in high school, even if her attendance was below 50 percent for the past three weeks. She had to stifle a loud sigh at the thought of having to get up early tomorrow morning when she wanted to sleep for 20 hours straight, so as not to send Renée into an emotional tailspin when things were already bad enough. Not to mention all the catching up Bella would have to do in her classes.

The two of them eventually finished their half-hearted conversation when an attending nurse notified Renée that she needed to hang up the call. Her mother had haltingly tried to initiate different topics but failed utterly due to her clear physical and mental fatigue, and Bella took the immediate chance to end the call.

After the call ended Bella made her way to her room and sat down at the edge of her bed. She was alone, and the thought of it brought tears to her eyes. Angrily, she wiped them away with the back of her hand; she had already cried enough about all that was going on. It wasn’t like more tears would change anything; they wouldn’t make her mother or her life _normal_ , and they wouldn’t make her feel less alone either.

Bella wished she still had that childish ability to conjure up her imaginary friend from when she was younger; she found herself sort of missing Alice – even though she had turned out to be just a figment of her own imagination. The young woman barked a humorless laugh; she was being pathetic, wishing for an imaginary companion like that – one she was many years too old to even be thinking about.

The last time Bella could remember she spent time with her friend was all the way back when she was nine years old and Renée had just moved them to Phoenix. That was seven and a half years ago. Alice had stopped showing up around then, which to Bella meant that she’d clearly grown out of her childish phase and stopped being able to conjure up a friend to talk and goof around with. To be honest, that wasn’t much of a surprise; Bella had by necessity been forced to step out of her childhood-shoes much sooner than any of her peers because of her mother’s illness.

Dwelling about Alice for a while longer, Bella thought back to how that dark-haired _pixie_ – for lack of a better word – had been a relatively regular fixture in her life for a period. Bella’s mother and father separated in September of 2008 – just after she’d turned seven years old. They finalized the divorce in the spring of 2009 and Renée moved herself and Bella to Salisbury, Massachusetts. It was during her last few weeks in Forks, Washington that Bella could remember having begun to see Alice sporadically, but she couldn’t recall if they interacted any.

When Bella arrived in Salisbury, she had been the new kid on the block, and poked and teased for being a silent and awkward nerd with glasses who rather played Animal Crossing on her Nintendo DS than hung with the other kids at school. And then Alice would show up outside school when Bella stayed over for a while to avoid more teasing after the last bell rang, or in her room when she arrived home for the day. She would comfort her at times, or just talk to her about everything and nothing. Sometimes Bella would show Alice her games, and her friend would be so intrigued by the colorful pixels shaped into anthropomorphic animals that Bella would have to jump on top of her or cling to her back to get her attention again.

The oldest memory Bella had of Alice that she could remember clearly – that wasn’t fragmented or tarnished by age or missing segments – was from just after Renée and Bella had moved across the country to Massachusetts in the spring of 2009 and Bella had walked into her new room for the first time.

////

_“Do you need help with that?” chimed a voice underlined with laughter._

_“Eek!” Bella startled enough that she jumped; the result being that the carefully stacked boxes on top of the very heavy steamer trunk she was dragging into her new room toppled over and went crashing to the floor._

_“Oh, I’m sorry Bella!” the same voice exclaimed._

_Bella barely had time to recognize that the voice belonged to Alice before said person was crouching right next to her and looking her over for any injury._

_“Alice! I told you not to sneak up on me like that!” Bella whined and tried swatting at Alice._

_When she missed due to her friend’s exceptional reflexes Bella stomped her foot on the floor like the angry seven and a half-year-old she was. A tinkling laughter came from her left, and the young girl quickly snapped her head in its direction and narrowed her eyes petulantly at the source of the sound._

_Alice was fighting hard not to grin, and Bella’s childish but very expressive response to the whole situation only made it harder._

_“It’s not even funny,” Bella tried._

_Her friend’s laughter was contagious, and Bella fought hard to keep a smile off her face; Alice always lifted her mood when she showed up._

_“Oh, but it is,” Bella’s older friend snickered._

_Alice caught sight of a drawing that had escaped from one of the tipped over boxes; a stick figure with messy black hair, red eyes and a kind smile was holding the hand of a shorter stick figure with longer brown hair, disproportioned glasses and a long straight line for a mouth – and she quickly settled down:_

_“I’m sorry for making you jump. I can help pick this up and we can put your new room in order if you like, Bella?”_

_Like a switch had been flipped, Bella snapped out of her mood – which she mostly had put on for show because of Alice’s teasing:_

_“Okay!”_

_Without any further preamble Alice stood back up and grabbed the handle of the steamer trunk that Renée had impulsively bought at a yard sale in Forks and proceeded to drag it across the floor of Bella’s new room like it weighed nothing._

_“Alice…” Bella voiced, chewing thoughtfully on her lip, when the noise from the trunk scraping against the wooden floor ceased._

_“Yes, Bella?”_

_“You’re tiny—”_

_“Thank you for the kind observation,” Alice interrupted with faux annoyance._

_“—how come you’re so strong?”_

_Bella had no idea what the trunk weighed, but she remembered her father Charlie’s pained red-faced expression – he had even cursed! – when he’d lifted it into the car that Renée had driven Bella and herself to the airport in Seattle with the day before._

_Alice smiled mysteriously and ventured over to sit on the messy bed. She patted the space next to her._

_“Come and sit, and I’ll tell you the secret to why I’m so strong.”_

_Bella lit up at the promise and hurried over to the bed. It wasn’t her bed – it had been left there by the previous tenant – and so it was a bit too high for her 3’10”-frame to easily get up on. Alice reached out and grabbed the young girl under her arms and hoisted her up on the bed as if she was a sack of potatoes, while pointedly ignoring Bella glaring at her for doing so._

_“Now tell me how you’re so strong! It was hard even for dad to lift it, and he’s the strongest person I know!”_

_Alice chuckled, but the twinkle in her eye went unnoticed by Bella who was working herself up into a nagging-frenzy just to get back at Alice for teasing her earlier. Just as the young girl was about to launch into said frenzy, Alice held up a finger that surprisingly silenced her before she could even start._

_“I’m strong because when I was your age…” Alice began sagely, building anticipation – Bella was practically bouncing on her seat, “… I made sure to eat aaaaaaaall of my veggies, and more.”_

_Alice had barely been able to keep her voice from cracking with mirth. Bella just blinked rapidly for a second or two before she scowled._

_“That’s just dumb Alice. You’re dumb,” she accused her friend._

_Alice couldn’t contain her laughter any longer, and the sound of it, fairy-like as it was, just aggravated Bella further._

_She should have known Alice would just tease her! Frustrated she repeatedly slapped her small hand lightly on Alice’s arm, not really registering the chill of her skin. Alice pretended to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye – still laughing, and was just about to grab Bella’s hand to put a stop to her flailing and risking injure to herself when a voice shouted:_

_“GODDAMN HORSE-LOVING CRAP WAFFLE, SON OF A BITCH! FU—”_

_Both Bella and Alice jerked towards the string of expletives that kept pouring out of Renée’s mouth somewhere in the house, and rapidly moving down the hallway just outside Bella’s room. The former of the two took much longer to react to the incident, and just as she turned her worried eyes towards Alice next to her – to explain to her friend that her mother wasn’t feeling well – she found that Alice was gone._

_Bella couldn’t keep the sadness away from her face, but as she approached her door to go check what had upset her mother, she figured that Alice would return to hang out with her more later. Her strange friend had a habit of disappearing suddenly – and while Bella wasn’t entirely sure what her abrupt traceless disappearances meant, how they were possible, and why Alice did it, she didn’t think too hard about all that yet._

////

It was a cherished memory for Bella. Even if she could remember minute-short snippets from other encounters with her strange friend; from the wiser, older girl giving her strange and very specific advice, to her reading stories to the young girl near bedtime. This, however, was the first full encounter that the now young woman could remember she ever had of her imaginary friend, and even though she was fully convinced that it wasn’t real, it still held a special place in her heart. A few more tears slipped free from Bella; she wished things were different – maybe there was an alternative universe out there in which Alice had been real and her caregiver instead of her broken mother.

Bella was snapped out of her melancholy inner musings by the sound of the phone ringing. She hurried out into the hallway, snorting to try and clear her sinuses from any signs that she had been crying before picking up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon. My name is Claire Bonich, may I speak to Isabella Swan?”

“This is her,” Bella replied with steadily increasing anxiety; she had a good feeling what this call was going to be about.

“Ah, good. I’m calling from Child Protective Services. Do you know why?”

Bella wanted to snap at the woman, to demand that she just say what she called for and get it over with.

“Yeah, it’s about my mom.”

“Yes. Your mother’s assigned physician alerted CPS to your family-situation when you came in with her on Friday. I was sent out to talk with you in the hospital, but I couldn’t find you.”

“I had to leave,” Bella said stiffly.

She wasn’t about to be reprimanded for not having wanted to be anywhere near the hospital staff strapping her mother to a bed and forcefully medicating her with antipsychotics – or however emergency psychiatric care happened – when she’d finally gotten Renée admitted and been given a moment to just _breathe_.

The voice on the other end of the line seemed to soften:

“I understand that, Isabella. This must be very difficult for you. Usually, in a case such as yours we would notify the other caregiver first and foremost but since they’re not living in this state, I made an effort to contact you after we missed each other at the hospital. I know you’re 17, but I felt it important to check up on you after what your mother’s physician told me; family-members falling ill can be very distressing.”

“Thanks,” Bella mumbled dejectedly.

She cynically thought to herself that _of course_ she had to go and become some authority-case as well.

“Speaking of other caregiver… I’ve finally gotten in touch with Charles Swan this morning, your father?”

“Yeah….?” Bella asked apprehensively.

“The way I’ve understood it you don’t spend much time with him?”

“He lives far away, in Washington. I wanted to live with mom. But I spent almost all summer and many other breaks at dad’s up until a few years ago. Uh, what did he say when you talked to him? What does this mean for me, I mean?”

“This is the other reason I’m calling. I’ve talked to him, and while he technically already has shared custody of you, you’re still a minor so CPS has filed an injunction with the courts to have your mother’s role as primary caregiver transferred over to him.”

Bella had seen this coming from a mile away. Honestly, she found it surprising that the CPS hadn’t picked up on this years ago. Although, it wasn’t like Bella had told anyone about her mother’s diagnosis.

“What do you know of your mother’s illness? From what I gathered from your father he didn’t know she was sick.”

“I know she’s bipolar. I’ve known that for years. She was manic—well she’s been for the last three weeks or something. I-I think she quit her meds. Like she’s been hypomanic and depressed and stuff before, but it’s never been this bad. That’s why I drove her in on Friday, she was acting—” Bella cut herself off when a tightness seized her throat, threatening to break her down into spluttering sobs again.

“It is fully understandable that this is difficult for you. I’m here to help, Isabella. I’ve talked to your mother’s physician, and while they were reluctant to share any details it’s likely that she will remain hospitalized for the rest of the week, at the very least. Your father has been brought up to speed about this as well, he’ll call you sometime after we’re done here, and he was ready to take over the role as primary caregiver the moment he heard of your mother’s condition. At least for the foreseeable future, until your mother’s illness is under control and she can function independently with the use of medication. This means that you will have to move to Washington to live with him…” the CPS-worker trailed off, no doubt expecting Bella to put up a fight at being up-rooted from her home of many years and shipped to Forks, Washington.

“Sure,” Bella said and shrugged to herself, unable to muster up more effort than that – she was just so _tired_.

Ms. Bonich seemed to be taken by surprise by Bella’s lackluster response, and cleared her throat:

“I am obligated to inform you that by Arizona state law, since you’re older than 16 you have the right to petition the court for emancipation and in that way challenge this injunction in court. Emanc—”

“I know what ‘emancipation’ is,” Bella interrupted. She had looked it up many times, and at one point a few months before her 16th birthday last year she had felt that she could barely wait to turn 16 in order to become emancipated. From her mother, in particular.

“Then I assume you also know that you will need to show the court that you are financially and socially independent?”

“Yes. But I don’t want that. I… I mean I would probably have to quit high school to get a job that would support me. Or like, several jobs. I wanna graduate. I’ll move to Char—I mean, my father.”

“Okay, Isabella. You sound like a very smart young woman. I’m assigned to your case, and I’ll come over tomorrow morning to work over some details, the logistics of the move. Your father told me he’d buy the first tickets he could and that he’d call you later today. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good.”

It wasn’t like Bella had any choice in the matter anyway.

“Great. Will you be okay for now? Do you have food and other necessities at home, enough to last for a few days in a worst-case scenario?”

“Yeah. I’ve done the grocery shopping, it’s fine.”

“Good to hear. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

They said their goodbyes’, and as soon as the call disconnected Bella marched to her room peeling off yesterday’s clothes as she went. Like a log of timber, she dropped face first down on her mattress; she just wanted to sleep for a _week_.

////

“Good day, ladies and gentlemen. We are now preparing to land. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelt and the tray in front of you, and make sure your luggage is either in the closed overhead-compartments or under the seat in front of you,” one of the cabin staff announced in the mic.

Bella blinked back to reality; she had been dozing off for the last hour of the flight.

Charlie, her father, was set to meet her at Sea-Tac Airport after landing. He had insisted upon driving all the way to Seattle to pick her up instead of letting her take a connecting flight to Port Angeles, which was much closer to Forks. Bella mused that she seemed to have inherited her stubbornness mainly from her father.

Bella had admitted to herself while on the flight that she was nervous to meet Charlie. She hadn’t visited Forks or seen her dad face-to-face since the summer break of 2016 – two and a half years ago. They had skyped occasionally since, but that wasn’t really the same. Forks had a weird effect on Bella; she supposed it started when she was last there visiting, about to begin high school back home and just having hit puberty all in one go, and the feeling never left. The small town made her anxious and a little sad; the thought of moving there made Bella slightly uncomfortable, not just because of the location itself but also because of the presence of Charlie that moving to Forks brought with it.

Bella had all-around mixed feelings when it came to him; she supposed she loved him the way a kid loves a parent – in the same way she loved Renée as her mother – but Bella couldn’t help wondering why Charlie hadn’t fought harder for her over the years. Tried to keep Renée and Bella closer to Washington after the divorce, tried for more visitation with Bella, fought for custody over Bella despite her – in retrospect, stupid – wish to live with her mother.

She had thought about that a lot over the years, her thoughts ranging from worry and despair that Charlie never really wanted her, to acceptance and a bittersweet realization that Charlie and Bella were much too alike and that it had probably been for the best that she’d decided to live with her mother when her parents divorced.

In a way, she had now gotten a second chance with her father however forced by necessity it was. Bella had always been told she was very mature for her age; she would try her best to make things right between her and Charlie – and she hoped that he felt the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: I'm not American, so it was a serious task in and of itself to get an idea of how all the emancipation/custody-mumbo jumbo worked and make it seem at least somewhat plausible. Hopefully it made sense ^^'
> 
> Please feel free to add a comment of what you thought of this first chapter (and even other stuff is fine as well)!


	2. Welcome to Forks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back (a week ahead of schedule) by popular demand!
> 
> Hello again,  
> thank you for the positive comments on the first chapter/prologue. I was really nervous about actually publishing this work in the first place, but the positive response really got me excited to keep going. :D  
> Ideally I'd get to publish one chapter a week, but I'm afraid that if I set that pace I'll catch up to myself with what I have written so far, and you guys will have to wait super-long later on instead :/

Bella looked demurely out at the cramped arrivals hall; she hadn’t yet spotted Charlie and she worried that he’d forgotten she was coming that day. The airport was filled to the brim with passengers and waiting friends and family; the winter-holidays were less than two weeks away and people were traveling across the country for said friends and family, or abroad for a winter vacation.

Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a sign being somewhat hesitantly raised in the sea of people waiting in Arrivals as she was being practically herded through the crowd by a stream of tired passengers. The sign had “Bella” written on it with large letters, and further below it in much smaller and cramped text it said “Swan”, almost as an afterthought remembered at the last second. Bella smiled to herself, that was certainly Charlie standing there with the sign. She steered her baggage-carrier over towards it.

“Hey Charlie,” she said as she came within distance of him.

Charlie startled, he had been focused on the crowd of people to his left and hadn’t seen Bella come up to him.

“Oh. Hey Bella,” he replied, subconsciously reaching back to scratch his neck, “didn’t see you there.”

Gosh, Bella had to stifle a smile at how awkward she just remembered Charlie to be. Before Bella could say much else Charlie glanced over to her baggage and recognized a certain large, very ungainly steamer trunk.

“Oh Christ, not that thing again,” Charlie blurted unhappily.

Bella couldn’t stifle a bark of laughter:

“Hah, it was the only thing I had on such short notice that was large enough to fit my stuff. Besides money is a bit tight… err, in that it basically doesn’t exist at all.”

“You could have told me, and I would have wired some!” Charlie exclaimed.

“Meh, it’s cool. I like it, it brings back good memories. But honestly, I swear the weight of it empty took up like half the weight allowed on my ticket.”

Charlie smiled crookedly, his mustache scrunching up on one end:

“I’m not surprised, Bells.”

Bella smiled at that, the nickname. It calmed her worries somewhat that Charlie still used the nickname she remembered he gave her as a kid.

“Well, we should get going,” Charlie stated, “it’s a four-hour drive to Forks. Let’s buy something to eat in the car on the way home.”

_Home_. That description of Forks was still a foreign concept in Bella’s mind. She hadn’t thought of Forks as home in many years – granted, it had been a summer-home of sorts for many years in her later childhood and early teens, but never really _a home_. She supposed that was just one more thing to add to the list of stuff she’d have to get used to.

The drive back to Forks was relatively quiet. Charlie was a quiet person and Bella had inherited that trait from him. They talked a bit, Charlie mostly updated her about things that had happened in Forks since she was last there – all summed up in about two sentences – and then he had tried to breach the subject of Renée, much to Bella’s dismay. Thankfully he had gotten the queue when Bella immediately closed up:

“We can talk about it later, Bells. Just… just know that I’m happy to have you here, kid. I—I borrowed a book at the library about stuff to think about when raising a teenager—” Bella looked on in horror as the figurative train wreck of Charlie’s ramblings unfurled before her eyes, “and honestly, most stuff in that book sounded pretty ancient, but know that I’m here for you Bella. You can talk to me about anything. I’ll do much better now, with this second chance and all.”

“Charli—dad, it’s not like that. I mean, it’s not really a second chance for you – you didn’t do anything for me to choose to move away with mom. Like, hmm, I think you weren’t even given a proper first chance.”

Charlie looked at Bella astonishingly and seemed to contemplate her very mature reply – it was apparent that he hadn’t expected such leniency.

“Well, I mean… I liked the bottle maybe a little too much when you were a kid, Bells. Not dangerously much, but it was… well, unhealthy, I guess, especially after my folks died. Me and your mother’s relationship was unhealthy, and we were both part in that. While your mother got up to all sorts of crazy, I had a beer or six and crashed on the couch every night after work.”

“I don’t remember that…” Bella mumbled in the light of the new revelation. It made her a bit uneasy.

“I think past-me, the me back at the court hearing when they decided who should get main custody of you, just wasn’t ready to be a single dad with all that entailed,” Charlie noticed that Bella looked sad at that, and quickly continued, “but I am now! I can promise you that, Bella. The divorce took a lot out of me, but I’m back on track now. I’ve been back on track for eight-something years, and it’s my goddamned obligation to take care of you, protect you and make sure you’re happy!”

“Thanks, dad. It’s been really… difficult with mom lately. Still don’t wanna talk about it, I just wanna go home and sleep. I… I love you dad,” Bella admitted, and practically held her breath for how Charlie would react to the last part.

“I love you too Bells,” Charlie whispered back, the sheen of tears in his eyes going unnoticed by a sleepily blinking Bella.

Bella dozed off sometime after her and Charlie’s strange but nice conversation ended and awoke only as Charlie steered his car up on the driveway of his – and now also Bella’s – house. She blinked, still a bit groggy from sleep. Charlie was practically squeezing the car into the driveway on account of the large, scrappy-looking Chevrolet truck that was parked in the middle of it.

The car was a glaring rusty-red color with some actual rust detailing the side panels and hood. It looked sturdy to Bella, but old and worn.

“Do you have company?” she asked Charlie as he turned off his car.

“Nah. I… well, I took the liberty of buying you a car,” Charlie said, his hand again going back to scratch his neck in an awkward way.

“What? You didn’t have to do that, Charlie!” Bella exclaimed, shocked.

“I know. But I wanted to. Think of it as a housewarming gift. Besides, you need a car to get to school from here – no busses coming this route and it’s over a 30-minute walk to Forks High from here. I fitted it with snow chains, the roads are slippery here,” as he said that, Bella glanced around her.

She hadn’t seen snow with her own eyes for many years; Phoenix very rarely if ever got snow in the winter. In fact, the last time she _had_ seen snow had also been in the Washington area when she had visited Charlie for winter break three years earlier. Forks didn’t receive too much of it – a few inches here and there mostly concentrated to late December and early January – but the temperature constantly hovered around freezing point for the winter months, so the roads were coated in ice.

“We can go for a test-drive later, so you get used to it,” Charlie suggested when Bella walked over to the ugly-in-a-charming-way Chevy truck and looked it over curiously.

“Yeah, I think that would be wise.”

Bella had only had her driver’s license for a little over a year – even if she’d driven Renée’s car out of necessity a few times before she officially got it. Charlie didn’t have to know that – desperate times calls for desperate measures.

“Do you like it…?” Charlie asked hesitantly after a minute.

Bella turned to him and smiled:

“Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t say that it’s my go-to vehicle, but it has charm. Sturdy, too.”

“They don’t make ‘em like this anymore,” Charlie stated and proceeded to carry Bella’s stuff out of the car, “Anyways, welcome back to Forks, Bella.”

Bella followed her father and helped carry stuff up to her new room where she could. The week had only begun but she still had Tuesday free to unpack and get settled in her room. Charlie had handled everything about the school and Bella’s transference and gotten her enrolled at Forks High with start on Wednesday. Bella tried not to think about that, she didn’t look forward being the new kid at yet another school – even if it had been some time since she last had switched schools – but she figured the sooner she resumed school the better.

////

“Bella, I’m leaving now! There’s coffee and some toast down here and remember you can call me for whatever reason!” Charlie hollered up the staircase.

“Yeah, thanks. I’m sure it’s gonna be fine though,” Bella said as she exited the bathroom, towel-drying her hair.

She wasn’t at all sure it was going to be fine, but she didn’t want Charlie to hover around her any longer. He had been a bit overbearing the two days she had only lived with him so far, and she needed a few moments alone before her debut at Forks High.

“High-schoolers can be a real pain, I don’t want anyone giving you trouble is all,” Charlie said.

Bella suspected he had a lot of experience firsthand with trouble-causing teenagers by being the Chief of Police in Forks.

“Don’t I know it,” Bella mused, “but they usually give up when I ignore them.”

Charlie realized there was some emotional baggage there, but decided he was going to ask about that later; he really did have to leave, or he would be late to the station.

Bella eventually made her way downstairs for breakfast. She only had a few minutes to enjoy it before she caught a glimpse of the time and had to get going. She figured she would need a bit of a margin with how she was going to drive the large heap of red metal masquerading as a truck to school and the snow chains only allowed her to drive 30 miles per hour. She’d rather be early and sit in the parking lot for a few minutes, than late for her first class on her first day at a new school – she mentally shivered at the thought of how awkward that would be.

Bella was feeling a bit shaky as she pulled in at the parking lot at the Forks High campus – she had seemed unable to shake the jittery feeling of being watched or followed on the drive there. She figured it was her mind playing tricks on her because of nerves.

Thankfully the parking lot offered many free spaces; it wasn’t even near as crowded as Paradise Valley had been in Phoenix with its almost 2000 students. Bella estimated by the size and population of the countryside town that its high school probably had 500 students tops.

From what she had seen so far, the campus was large, and the buildings looked well-maintained. She could spot the gymnasium and track field in the distance, and the parts of the campus that wasn’t surrounded by other buildings were surrounded by large fields that connected to a sprawling pine forest that stretched out as far as she could see. The sights weren’t as gloomy as Bella remember them to be, but rather tranquil instead.

Bella had barely gotten out of her car and grabbed her backpack before a voice from behind her almost made her jump out of her skin:

“Hi, you’re Isabella Swan, right? The new girl?”

Bella took a second to compose herself before she turned around.

“That’s me,” she said tiredly.

She wasn’t really in the mood for introductions, and certainly not before she’d even had time to acclimatize to the thought of being in a new school.

“I’m Eric Yorkie, Forks High’s resident geek!” the boy in front of her said excitedly and held his hand out to Bella to shake.

He had a childish vibe about him, but clearly had some type of fashion sense and general know-how. He had thick and wild shoulder-length black hair and was sharply dressed in a dark button-up shirt with a tie and tan chinos.

“Isabella Swan. But I prefer Bella,” Bella said, awkwardly shaking the energetic boy’s hand.

“I can show you to the office where you’ll get your schedule.”

“Cool. Thanks,” Bella mumbled as they began walking towards what appeared to be the main building on the campus.

“What you got first period?” Eric asked Bella, again excitedly, as soon as she had registered at the office and gotten her schedule.

To Bella, Eric’s excitement was on one hand appreciated and on the other hand grating on her mind.

“Trigonometry,” Bella sighed.

“That sucks. But hey, you’ll be in the same class as two of my friends, let’s see if we can find them and I’ll introduce you!” Eric suggested, much to Bella’s horror.

She wasn’t keen on more introductions, but she supposed in a way that they were necessary evils. The two of them had barely made it ten steps out of the office before Eric obnoxiously hollered down the hall:

“Hey guys! Look who I found, it’s Isabella – the new girl!”

Bella briefly entertained the idea of bolting down the opposite end of the hallway as three specific sets of eyes fastened on her – together with pretty much every other pair of eyes in the hallway. Eric hooked his arm in Bella’s and practically dragged her over to the group.

“Uh, hey guys…” Bella mumbled as Eric and her skidded to a halt in front of them.

“Hey Isabella. My name’s Angela. This here,” Angela said and gestured to the brunette next to her, who looked mildly disinterested for some reason, “is Jessica. Be nice Jess,” She instructed Jessica, who glared at her for a second before smiling hesitantly at Bella and formally introduced herself.

“Hi, I’m Mike Newton,” a friendly-looking boy next to them said. Bella looked him over; he wore a letterman with the Spartan – Forks High School’s mascot – insignia and lettering. His hair was blonde and short, and he had an athletic well-built frame. Clearly a jock of some caliber.

“Bella has trig first class, so she’ll be with you Ang—” Eric said.

“And me,” Mike piped up.

“And Mike,” Eric repeated, narrowing his eyes at Mike.

“We’ll take good care of you,” Angela said kindly, ignoring Eric and Mike as they derailed into some sort of friendly argument.

Bella almost bristled; she couldn’t help feeling a bit like a baby, being shipped between and doted on by random strangers, and she didn’t like it. The bell rang shortly after that, and Bella set off to her first class at Forks High School.

////

Something strange happened the Friday that first week, when Bella came home from Forks High.

Charlie had clocked off an hour earlier so that he’d be home when Bella arrived from school. Just in case her week had taken a toll on her and she needed some support. Besides, it was Friday after all and things in town were calm. Somewhat to his dismay though, Bella dumped her jacket next to the front door, kicked off her shoes and hurried up the stairs while mumbling something about sleep. He supposed that drowsiness was part of being a teenager – the book he’d borrowed _had_ said something along those lines – and as he thought about it, he remembered that he had also been tired and grumpy when he was a teen.

Bella closed the door to her room and dumped her backpack on her desk; she was in desperate need of a nap. Trigonometry had been an absolute bitch the two classes of it that she’d had so far. She would need to study hard at home to catch up in it. She had, after all, transferred in the middle of the year and had been woefully behind back in Phoenix too.

As Bella turned towards her bed, her longing expression at the sight and comfort of it was quickly exchanged for confusion. Her bed was made, for one. Bella couldn’t remember having made it that morning. And there was a folded note on her pillow.

“’I’m really glad that you decided to move back here. I’ve missed you’,” Bella read quietly to herself from the note.

The text was written by hand in a careful and eloquent cursive, and Bella knew the moment she saw it that it was familiar. She just couldn’t place from where she recognized it. At least not until she read the name that was stenciled at the end of the note:

“’Alice’…”

That name jarred Bella, and she instinctively dropped the note back on the bed as if it had given her a shock. The presence of that name made absolutely zero sense, and Bella subconsciously began to rationalize what she’d read to find something that _did_ make sense, while she double- and triple-checked that she had in fact read the name correctly. Bella went over to her door and opened it:

“Charlie! Did you leave a note in my room?” she hollered to her father downstairs.

“Uh no? I haven’t been in your room at all. Why?” Came the reply.

“Never mind. I must have picked it up at school and forgotten,” Bella excused herself and went back inside.

She was certain that she hadn’t accidentally picked up the note, written in the handwriting of and signed by her imaginary childhood friend, at school.

Bella went over to her bed and laid down on top of the sheets. She absentmindedly noted that a foreign but nice scent wafted up from the fabric as she did. That wasn’t where her main thought-processes were currently at, though.

Somehow it appeared that her _childhood imaginary friend_ had written her a note essentially welcoming her to Forks, and possibly made her bed while she was at school. The bed Bella supposed that she could have done herself and just been too sleepy to remember, but the note…? It was unlikely that she had consciously written it without remembering any part of it; her cursive wasn’t even nearly as perfected as the one on the note.

From that line of thinking came the rational explanation of the whole thing to Bella’s mind; the note was either an elaborate prank from Charlie’s side, or Bella had written the note in her sleep or while temporarily being _very_ distracted by something else, and then somehow misplaced it on the bed in some strange way. Even if it was a rational explanation, she wasn’t sure if it should be cause for worry on her side if she had indeed done it in her sleep.

Alice. Bella’s thoughts spun on to the topic of her imaginary friend, and before she knew it, she was sucked into one of her pleasant childhood memories involving her strange friend with red eyes.

////

_“Oh, hey Alice,” Bella murmured as she came into her room._

_Alice had a strange predisposition to show up when things were rough for Bella, so she wasn’t that surprised to see her friend sitting on her new bed._

_“Hi Bella,” Alice replied and fired off a smile at the young girl, “what’s up?”_

_“Nothing much…” Bella mumbled dejectedly._

_Alice already knew that things around Bella weren’t good; her mother wasn’t well – Alice had known that for a long time – and they had moved across the country again just a week and a half prior, so Bella had been forced to switch schools. Again. Apparently, some kids in her class were mean to her because of her glasses and lanky frame, as well. That wasn’t something that Alice could do anything about without attracting the wrong kind of attention, though._

_“…do you want to talk about it?” Alice asked Bella as the sad girl made her way over to the bed and climbed up to sit next to her._

_Bella contemplated the offer._

_“Mom’s not well. She won’t talk about it, but she was at the doctor a few days ago, and now she takes pills every morning at breakfast…”_

_It was clear to Alice that Bella was worried about her mother’s wellbeing and confused as to what the doctor and the pills meant. She realized that she had to tread carefully on the subject; she had very little knowledge of that part of human health, even if she had a way to somewhat guide the conversation the right way._

_“Maybe the pills will make your mother feel better?” Alice suggested trying to perk Bella up. Her attempt had limited success to say the least._

_Bella looked up at her strange friend then; her lip trapped worriedly between her teeth and her eyes shiny with held back tears. Somehow Alice’s strange red eyes grounded Bella. She still found other similarly strange eye-colors on people on the TV unnerving, but there was something special about Alice’s expressive red orbs._

_“But what if she’s really sick, Alice!” Bella exclaimed – horror evident on her face as the meaning behind what she said dawned on her._

_“Bella,” Alice tried to ground the tiny innocent girl she had veritably attached herself to, “Bella, listen to me. I know that your mother is not that sic—”_

_“What if she’s gonna die, Alice!” Bella cried, tears running freely down her cheeks._

_Alice had to calm the girl down, both for her sake and to not risk that Renée came looking for the noise and accidentally cut Alice’s time with Bella short._

_“Bella, your mother is not going to die,” Alice stated with confidence._

_Her gift allowed her to know that much. Renée would obviously die someday but judging by Alice failing to see it happen with her gift it was safe to say that it was many years away. And if that changed she was confident she’d have time to either stop it or prepare Bella for it._

_Bella paused in her meltdown at Alice’s insistent tone._

_“Your mother is going to stay very much alive for the foreseeable future, trust me on this Bella. I promise you.”_

_“How do you know that?” Bella demanded, suddenly not crying._

_Alice gave the girl a demure smile:_

_“I have magic abilities,” she said and tapped her right temple, “in here.”_

_Bella tried to keep a scowl from her face, she really did, but she wasn’t in the mood for games or riddles. Still, there was something about Alice that just made Bella trust her, that made Bella feel safe with her. Maybe Alice was right, magic abilities or not? Subconsciously Bella shuffled a bit closer to her, not noticing that her enigmatic friend stiffened at the sudden closeness._

_Before Bella could even begin to grasp what was going on, she was swaddled in the quilt that her grandmother had given her and perched on top of Alice’s lap. The sudden, much too fast, movement caused Bella’s vision to spin and she had to blink several times in rapid succession to regain her bearings._

_“Alice…?” she questioned, utterly confused._

_“I will always keep you safe, Bella. I know that you are worried when your mother is sometimes too tired to get up from bed all day, and that her sudden outbursts scare you sometimes, but I promise you that I will never let anything bad happen to you. I will keep you safe… and maybe someday…” Alice trailed off, but Bella hardly noticed._

_The confident way Alice practically guaranteed Bella’s absolute safety grounded her, and how Bella was practically wrapped up in a cocoon of her favorite quilt and Alice’s arms lulled her into a pacified state. She nodded off shortly afterwards._

////

“Bella! _Isabella!_ ” Charlie shouted from downstairs, effectively snapping Bella out of her last complete memory of Alice, much to her annoyance.

She recognized that thinking back to childish memories like that was probably weird behavior for a teenager, that her mind should be occupied with much more trivial and shallow matters, but she cherished the memories – they worked like a warm blanket to soothe her shivering anxiety, no matter how bittersweet they were.

“What?!”

“Dinner!”

“Ugh, _coming!_ ”

Bella proceeded to get up from her bed, and as she did her eyes caught sight of something – or rather some _one_ – sitting in the old rocking-chair in the corner furthest away from her. The sight effectively froze Bella mid-ascension, her mouth falling open in pure shock.

“Hello, Is—Bella,” Alice greeted her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles maniacally at the ending and runs away*


	3. Winter break, baby!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m in the midst of finals and they’re killing meeeeeee.  
> On a whim I decided to add some last-minute content to this chapter (some 400-ish words) and I’m currently chronically sleep-deprived so it is very possible that there are some errors and/or repetitions and needlessly expositive sections.
> 
> Bella is sliiiightly OOC in this story in that she (sparingly) curses and won’t be a Mormon’s wet dream when it comes to other issues either. Still, I’ve made an effort to keep her personality as faithful to the canon as possible.

Time seemed to come to a halt as Bella just stared at the person – her _imaginary_ friend – across the room. A part of her realized that she should probably close her mouth and maybe also reply to Alice because that’s what you do when someone speaks to you – you act normal and you reply, you _don’t_ act weird with your mouth flapped open. But then again, another part reasoned, why should she – the entire situation was impossible, it couldn’t possibly be _real_.

Alice’s expression was that of a furrowed brow combined with a crooked smile – signaling that she too was uncomfortable. And she was; despite what her visions had told her she couldn’t have known how strange it would feel to stand face-to-face with Bella again, now a young woman. Her gift threatened to fail her on account of her emotions shooting off in all possible directions within her.

“What the actual fu—” Bella mumbled more to herself than to Alice, worried why she was suddenly hallucinating, before she was interrupted:

“Bella, your dinner is getting cold!” Charlie hollered from halfway up the stairs, interrupting both Bella and Alice – whom had also seemed about to say something.

Bella sobered up at the very real concern that her father could barge into her room any second and see her just dumbly gawking into space – and that would raise questions Bella wasn’t sure she wanted to answer.

“Wait here. Please,” she found herself saying in a strangely pleading tone that she hadn’t at all meant for to be there, before she left her room to join Charlie for dinner, perplexed as to why she’d even addressed the specter her imagination had conjured up in the first place.

“Sure,” Bella heard Alice’s voice reply as she closed the door to her room behind her and went downstairs.

“What took you so long?” Charlie asked impatiently when Bella finally arrived in the kitchen.

“Homework. Trig,” Bella lied stiffly.

She generally disliked lying, and especially to Charlie after all he had done for her the past few days. But Bella figured she couldn’t exactly tell him the truth; _It’s nothing Charlie, just my imaginary friend paying me a visit_.

“Oh, already?”

“Yeah, I was pretty behind in Phoenix. I didn’t exactly have full attendance those last weeks.”

At least that part wasn’t a lie, but Charlie already knew of the steep dive Bella’s grades had taken at the end of her time in Phoenix.

“Right,” he winced, reminded about how difficult things must have been for his daughter lately, “so, have you made any new friends? People been good to you?”

“I’ve met some cool people, but I wouldn’t call them friends just yet,” Bella smiled crookedly.

“Who?”

“Uhh, a girl called Angela Weber – she was nice. She’s friends with Eric… Yorkie, I believe – he basically jumped me out on the parking lot first thing on Wednesday morning. Then there was Jessica, I’ve forgotten her last name, and Mike Newton. I share some classes with them, and I sat with them at lunch this week.”

“Ah, yeah I know of the Weber-girl. Her father’s the Lutheran minister. And the Newton-kid, you know Newton’s Olympic Outfitters in town? His parents own that store, they’re good folks.”

Naturally, Charlie would know who they were and who their parents were. Bella figured her father probably interacted a lot with the townspeople in his role as Chief of Police. She wanted to point out, just for the sake of pointing it out, that her new classmates’ parents being good people didn’t necessarily mean that their kids were, but she held her tongue. Charlie didn’t deserve her snark.

He had heated up some leftovers that Bella had cooked yesterday and made a salad on the side. It was nice. Frankly, the salad surprised Bella – clearly, she had judged Charlie a little too harshly when it came to his diet. She had assumed he lived off pizza and food from the diner in town.

Bella wasn’t of much entertainment at the table though, and only replied to social queues and Charlie’s questions with the minimal required amount of words. She had a lot of other stuff on her mind, and it was practically a miracle that she could keep herself together enough for dinner to be over. The moment she could, she excused herself.

“It’s cool Bells, I’ll take care of the dishes tonight. You go finish up your schoolwork and rest – I suspect this week’s been tough on you,” Charlie said as Bella dumped her dishes in the sink.

His thoughtfulness moved her, and she really felt like hugging him. She stifled the urge; Charlie would probably fluster and turn into his usual awkward self if she did.

“I don’t think I’ll be down anymore tonight, might even fall asleep. Goodnight Charlie,” Bella said and ascended the stairs.

As she walked down the short hallway to her room, she pinched her arm; if all this was a dream, she wanted to wake up. It was with a great deal of trepidation that Bella opened her door; she simultaneously wanted Alice to both be there and not be there. The former would hint at an odd but momentary dream because she’d fallen asleep after school – Bella figured she could deal with _that_ , while the implications of the latter in all likelihood could mean that seeing Alice _hadn’t_ been a dream, and that she in fact had hallucinated. The implications of that were far more concerning to Bella, considering she had a mother who on a handful of occasions had suffered from hallucinations herself.

It was with mixed feelings to say the least that Bella found Alice sitting on the edge of her bed; a dream then. Even if it hadn’t devolved into a nightmare – yet at least – and seeing Alice was objectively a pleasant experience considering how the dream could have started out, looking at her imaginary friend again felt like poking on a particularly bad bruise; it was a callback to a period of time in Bella’s life where everything had been _so_ much easier, and she couldn’t help but feel wistful for what could have been had Alice been real.

Without any further preamble Bella slapped herself across the cheek, deciding the emotional bruising wasn’t worth it, wanting to wake up – clearly the pinch in the arm hadn’t been enough.

“Bella!” Alice exclaimed in a shocked hush and jumped up from the bed.

“Okay ow, that clearly didn’t work,” Bella admitted sheepishly and worked her jaw to ease the sting.

She’d read somewhere that ways to encourage yourself to wake up from a dream – given you had sufficient control of your dreaming to begin with – could be trying to visualize that what she was seeing wasn’t actually real but just her brain processing the events of the last few days, or attempting to do something normally out of character like screaming for help at the top of her lungs. Uncertain if she in fact had that type of control over her dreams – she’d also read that it required practice – she decided to try it nonetheless.

“Don’t. Scream for help. You’re not in danger,” Alice said hurriedly before Bella could even suck in a breath to fuel her intended shout.

_That’s it_ , Bella thought to herself and marched over to Alice, _desperate times call for desperate measures._

What she was going to do was so wildly out of character that her brain just _had_ to realize it was dreaming – she’d probably taken a nap after school – and jerk her awake.

“What are you—” Alice began, but stiffened as Bella raised her hand.

Before she could talk herself out of it – her dedication to her plan was waning by the second, she really wasn’t a violent person – she attempted to slap _Alice_ across the cheek instead. If ending up in a brawl that she initiated with her decade’s-past imaginative friend wasn’t out-of-character enough, she didn’t know what was.

Before she had time to move her hand any meaningful distance towards Alice’s innocent but hauntingly beautiful face, Alice’s hand snapped up to grasp hers. Her hand was firm, chilly, smooth clasped softly around it, and Bella realized that not only was Alice’s hand _solid_ but her plan to do something crazy been foiled as well – and with that her entire resolve vaporized. 

She wobbled and almost sagged down to the floor, and Alice gingerly guided their hands down to a more natural height. Bella glanced distraught at the dainty pale hand holding her slightly larger and slightly more tanned one.

“This is it; I’ve gone over the deep end. I-I’ve gone crazy,” she mumbled to herself; Alice’s hand felt so _real_ in hers.

“Bella, you have not gone… crazy,” Alice admonished carefully, looking as if she’d tasted something bad at the mention of the word.

“Isn’t that exactly what you – or I mean, _I_ – would say because I am de facto crazy…? Crazy people never think they’re crazy themselves,” Bella wondered aloud.

“Stop saying you’re crazy!”

“B-but… I’m too old to be imagining you, aren’t I? I-I mean like I used to…” Bella’s head was beginning to hurt.

“You’re not imagining me. You never were,” Alice said quietly, morose at the reminder that her disappearance from Bella’s life had turned her into an imaginary friend in the younger girl’s mind.

Alice had come to accept the possibility of that role being assigned to her early on in their strange relationship; if all she could be for Bella when she had been a young child and successively grown up was an imaginative friend, then that was what she would be. But now that Bella was older and more mature – an adult for all intents and purposes – there was a possibility that she could exist in Bella’s life as something else, something _real_. Again. Maybe even something more, in the future.

“Uhh…” Bella trailed off, completely at a loss of words.

“I’m very real,” Alice stated, a sudden defiant streak appearing on her face.

“That’s impossible,” Bella just echoed her thoughts.

As she replied to Alice, she realized that she was basically standing in her room arguing with a hallucination or whatever figment of her imagination that Alice represented, and that made her physically wince.

“I suppose that this isn’t exactly a normal occurrence, but I really am real,” Alice insisted.

“Prove it,” Bella demanded, crossing her arms.

Something strange came over Alice’s expression; Bella interpreted it as fear and maybe regret.

“I can’t. Not by any other means than I’ve already shown. Not yet. But you touched me. That means I’m solid.”

“Why?”

“Because I will scare you, and you will be too afraid to see me again.”

“How do you know that?”

“Magic abilities,” Alice said, and tapped her temple similarly to the way she had in Bella’s memories from when she was nine years old, “in here, remember?”

Bella noticed that a small smile played on Alice’s face, as if the whole situation wasn’t at all weird for her – if she even _existed_ at all that was.

“This is fucked up,” Bella stated, fed up with the whole situation.

Alice was still holding her hand, and Bella quickly pulled it from her grasp. Her mind was running in circles, trying to come up with some sort of logical explanation to everything, and she suddenly felt so tired – she just wanted to sleep and forget everything that was going on, even if only temporarily.

Alice didn’t reply; Bella’s statement didn’t exactly require one. She desperately wanted to hold Bella’s hand again; a strong, practically primal, part of her wanted to just embrace the young woman in front of her and explain everything and never let her out of her sight again. But Alice’s ability allowed her to know that if she did that right now, if she gave in to the impulse, she would permanently alienate Bella from herself.

It was a tricky situation; telling Bella everything – answering all her questions – was what Alice wanted and Bella thought she needed, but not what would yield the best result. Sometimes Alice’s gift was more of a curse than blessing.

“I think I should go now,” Alice said – unbeknownst to Bella picking the words right out of her mouth, “you need some time to think, and sleep. It’s important to me that you get the chance to take care of yourself, I know that this is a lot for you.”

Bella wanted to ask just what ‘this’ was; she wasn’t even certain that the past hour or so had even really happened. She still held out hope that she was asleep on her bed and dreaming it all up, including dinner with Charlie.

“Yeah, sure…”

“Take the time you need. When you want me to come to you again, leave the handle on your window open before you go to school, and I’ll be here when you come home,” Alice said and made her way over to said window.

“Uh, what? W-what’re you doing?” Bella exclaimed, alarmed as Alice opened it and climbed out on the windowsill.

Her tiny form had no problem fitting through the frame, but Bella was astonished at how Alice kept her balance.

“I’ll see you later Bella,” Alice smiled at her before literally vanishing.

Bella thought she saw Alice’s form sort of smearing out, as if she was moving ridiculously fast instead of just popping out of existence, but as she made her way over to the window and looked outside, she couldn’t see a single trace of Alice – not even footsteps in the shallow layer of snow that surrounded the house.

“The _fuck_ is going on with me…” she mumbled aloud, hesitantly closed the window and went over to her bed.

Sleep eventually claimed Bella, but not before she had worried about what it even meant if she was falling asleep while she was asleep and tossing and turning about the recent events – her mind churning with questions and hypotheses – for two hours.

////

A week later saw Bella, Jessica and Angela hurry out of the classroom as the last bell rang, to meet up with the rest of their gang before winter break was officially a go.

“WINTER BREAK BABYYY!” Eric and Mike shouted in chorus, running up from behind the three women and flinging themselves haphazardly into a makeshift group-hug.

“Ugh, dorks,” Jessica muttered at Mike as her bag went flying to the floor in the commotion. She rolled her eyes at the attention the two young men drew to the group while Bella and Angela just laughed.

“So, what is everyone doing during the break?” Angela asked.

“I’m gonna lock myself in my room and play AC: Odyssey for two weeks straight!” Eric shouted triumphantly.

“A brilliant use of your time when, I dunno, you could be studying or something instead for the test on the 7th,” Jessica stated dryly.

“Who said I’m even coming back on the 7th? For all you know you may never see me again, what if I uncover some IRL Templar-plot and they kill me to get rid of the evidence?” Eric teased.

Jessica rolled her eyes again, but she was smiling. Eric knew how to get past her attitude.

“I’ll get some new hiking-gear for Christmas, so I’m probably gonna spend the break hiking and camping through the Park,” Mike said.

Bella was slightly impressed; she knew that Mike was the athletic type, but not that he was that hardcore about it.

“And you, Bella?” Angela asked kindly.

“Hmm, not sure. My dad has friends on the Quileute reservation, it sounds like we’ll spend the holidays with them. The rest of the week I’ll probably be chilling at home or something. And studying obviously.”

“You’re not gonna visit Arizona? Your mother still lives there, right?” Jessica asked.

Bella subconsciously winced; she hadn’t really explained to her new friends why she had moved to Forks in the first place. She supposed that to Jessica the concept of willingly staying cooped up in Forks if she had the chance to get away for a few days was completely foreign. Jessica had voiced her intense desire to get the hell out of the town multiple times in the one and a half week Bella had known her. She figured she might as well be honest:

“Nah. My mom is sick, that’s why I moved.”

“Oh! Is she going to be alright?” Angela immediately asked, worry etched all over her kind face.

“Yeah, she’s getting better. But it was better for everyone that I moved, so no visiting Arizona this break. Need a pause from the drama,” Bella explained and added a laugh at the last part to lighten up the mood a bit.

Bella had talked with her mother on the phone that past weekend, mostly to distract herself from thoughts about Alice.

Renée was still hospitalized, but she had been moved to the open psychiatric ward where she could stay until the end of the year when she’d be automatically discharged. Her attending physician had performed a lot of diagnostics on her and she’d gotten a whole new set of meds to replace what she used to take, meds that would regulate the emotional swings that her type of bipolar disorder was prone to.

The apartment had stood empty since Bella moved away but they’d rented that apartment for over seven years and their landlord was a reasonable person, so Renée had been excused from the late payment of the rent. She’d inherited quite a lot of money when her own mother had passed away when Bella was twelve, and even if Renée’s manic lapses meant she didn’t always hold on to money very well, she still had quite an inheritance-fund. It was calming for Bella to know that her mother still had somewhere to live once she got discharged.

“The bus is leaving in like three, we gotta go!” Eric said and practically dragged Mike and Angela with him.

They all rushed to say their _goodbyes’_ and _happy holidays’_ before they were out of view.

Jessica and Bella were the only two in their group who drove to school. Bella because she didn’t really have a choice unless she wanted to wake up at the crack of dawn and walk to school, and Jessica because she was too comfortable – and spoiled, if Bella had a say – to take the bus.

Bella didn’t harbor any negative feelings towards her though; she was a good friend and they had fun when Bella wasn’t stuck in her usual awkward funk and Jessica hadn’t yet turned up the snark to 100. Usually in Spanish-class. The two of them walked out to the parking lot together, said their respective goodbye’s and Jessica even gave Bella a hesitant hug before they parted ways for the next two weeks.

////

“Good evening Charlie! Bella,” Billy Black greeted the two Swans as he opened the front door of the Black-residence.

He navigated his wheelchair out of the way to allow the two guests to come inside. His best friend handed him a store-bought fruitcake and scratched his neck awkwardly.

“Merry Christmas Billy. It’s, uh, I forgot to pick up your actual gift before they closed,” Charlie said.

Bella smirked at Charlie; he was so awkward, and he tended to make people around him awkward too. Much like Bella herself, she thought.

“That’s okay,” Billy said, “I’ll come into town next week, I’ll pick it up then.”

Bella could hear several voices and something Christmassy playing from the TV from inside the house.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time, Bella. It must be, what, three or four years?” Billy directed his attention to Bella, who was fumbling with trying to get her shoes off.

Before she could reply, loud steps coming their way interrupted her:

“Did I hear ‘Bella’?” and excited-looking young man with lustrous, long black hair tied up at his mid back shouted as he came around the corner.

“… Jacob, right?” Bella asked, uncertain and taken off guard by the sudden contact.

She recognized him, but it had been years since she had last seen any of the Quileute natives, so she couldn’t be completely sure that the boy in front of her was indeed Billy Black’s son.

“Yeah…” Jacob replied, miffed that Bella hadn’t recognized him immediately.

Bella could remember when she had last been at the reservation, her last summer in Forks back in 2016 before her 15th birthday. Jacob was three years younger than Bella – not even a teen back then. She only remembered him from how he had practically followed her around that summer whenever she was at the reservation to hang with his older sisters Rachel and Rebecca, and Leah Clearwater – the daughter of another of Charlie’s friends. He had clearly had a crush on her back then, and Bella suspected it had just come back in full force upon seeing her.

Charlie and Bella had been invited to spend Christmas with the Blacks; Billy had a hard time getting out as much as he wanted because of the wheelchair. He and Charlie were very good friends, but Charlie’s house was everything but wheelchair-accessible. Harry and Sue Clearwater would be stopping by for dinner as well, bringing their kids with them.

Bella used to spend a lot of time with Leah Clearwater – the Clearwaters’ oldest – back when they were both kids and Bella visited Forks. Leah was a year older than Bella and attended the school on the reservation, but since their fathers were good friends and regularly went fishing together it was only natural that Leah and Bella would become friends. The son in the family, Seth Clearwater, was five years younger than Bella, so she hadn’t had much in-common with him.

Bella thought the large Christmas-dinner with friends and family was nice – even if she wasn’t a fan of large crowds. She hadn’t spent Christmas with anyone but herself and Renée the past two years.

“The kids are streaming some Christmas movies in the living room, if you wanna join ‘em Bella. Charlie and I should probably get started with dinner, Harry and Sue are gonna come over in an hour or so,” Billy said, and Charlie grasped the handles on his wheelchair and moved them both to the kitchen.

Bella followed Jacob back to the living room. Three sets of eyes looked up at her curiously as they walked through the door. Bella recognized Rachel and Rebecca – they were hard to miss on the account of being twins. But next to Rebecca sat a very tan, very bulky man that Bella had not seen before.

“Hi Bella! It’s been a while,” Rebecca greeted and smiled warmly, “this is my husband Solomon.”

The man next to Rebecca gave a friendly wave and turned his attention back to the TV.

Bella tried to not look shocked; Rebecca was only 18 and already married! Bella wanted to ask questions about how they’d even met – he didn’t seem to be from around Forks judging by his warm and fresh tan – and why they’d gotten married so soon, but realized she’d come off as rude. To each their own, Bella mused as an after-thought.

She was generally very laid-back about other people’s life choices. So long as they didn’t involve anyone getting hurt or exposed to something they didn’t want, she felt like it wasn’t her place to judge anyone that way. She took a seat next to the others, watching Christmas-specials of popular cartoons, making small-talk and reminiscing about their shared childhood while waiting for the other guests to show up and for dinner to be ready.

Harry and Sue Clearwater showed up an hour later. Their son Seth was with them. Bella looked for Leah – the Quileute native that she’d grown closest with when she had been a kid and young teen in Forks – but she didn’t appear to have come along. Bella felt a little disappointed at that, a part of her had missed Leah’s independent and confident take-no-shit attitude.

Bella’s time in Forks, both as a young kid before she moved away with Renée and during the school breaks that she spent in the town afterwards, had never resulted in any lasting or truly meaningful friendships. She had hung out with the Black-twins and Leah Clearwater frequently seeing as their respective fathers were good friends and often went on fishing-trips or watched sports together. Bella couldn’t explicitly remember a time when the kids hadn’t enjoyed each other’s company, but it had all been the innocent fun of childhood and early adolescence and they hadn’t kept in touch after Bella moved away or when she left for Arizona again at the end of her visits.

Charlie didn’t have any jurisdiction on the reservation – the Quileute governed themselves – but he was much respected in the area, nonetheless. Both Harry Clearwater and Billy Black were Elders of the tribe and their lifelong friendships with Charlie had put him in a good standing with the other citizens on the reservation.

When all introductions were over the front door suddenly flung open again, startling everyone in the hallway, and Leah Clearwater walked in. Eagerness coursed through Bella – she couldn’t help but feel excited to meet Leah again. She was curious to how Leah had changed over the past few years.

The first thing the young woman noticed was that Leah had physically changed _a lot._ If it hadn’t been for her face and telltale voice Bella could have mistaken Leah for a completely different person. She’d grown almost an entire foot since Bella had last seen her; she was just under six feet tall now. Bella was about an inch taller than the average height for a woman of her age, but Leah – who had never been taller than Bella before – trumped the younger woman’s height with a good margin at 5’11”. Leah’s body appeared athletic and well-sculpted in a way that told Bella she had a miniscule amount of body-fat percentage. She was dressed in a dark moss green button-up and black slimmed jeans. The long shiny black hair that Bella remember she’d had when they were kids had been cut much shorter and was pulled back into a wispy tail at her neck.

Bella was taken aback by the drastic change her former childhood friend had gone through. Leah caught sight of Bella almost immediately, and her eyes first bulged in shock. Then a large sly smile spread across her face. Bella held up a hand and waved in her direction, and then winced at her own awkwardness. Leah looked _good_ and she had a confident aura around her that made Bella feel even more awkward of her own lanky and _ordinary_ body.

As Leah walked towards her the smile on her face suddenly fell away and her expression contorted as if she’d smelled something bad. Leah not-so-discreetly sniffed the air and paused in her tracks. Bella had to fight the impulse to discreetly smell her pits to check that her B.O. was in order. Leah eventually approached nonetheless but her steps were measured, and her expression appeared more guarded than before.

“Hey Bella. What’s up?” the woman asked, her voice startlingly rough to Bella’s ears.

“Hey Leah, it’s… it’s good to see you. I’m not doing much, was thinking I’d go help Rachel with the food preparations soon.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while. So, what’re you doin’ back in Forks?” Leah asked.

Bella thought for sure that Charlie telling Billy and Harry the news about her moving back to live with him would have made its way to Leah.

“I… I’ve moved back to live with Charlie. Gonna finish high school here.”

“Cool,” Leah said, but her expression still hadn’t relaxed so Bella thought that the older woman found it everything but ‘cool’, “made some new friends?”

Bella frowned. Somehow the question seemed a bit direct, or rather more like an assumption than a real question. In any case it made Bella slightly uncomfortable. She felt as if Leah talked to her like a parent, trying to figure out some detail about her actions that she was withholding. Or maybe it was just her imagination, she dismissed, when she realized how paranoid she was being.

“Umm… yeah I’ve met some cool peeps. I don’t know if we’re friends yet though, but they’re nice,” Bella answered uncertainly.

Something glinted in Leah’s grey eyes at that, but Bella missed it on account of how she was looking anywhere but on Leah’s handsome and slightly intimidating face.

“Oh, who? Maybe I know ‘em?”

Bella doubted that. Most kids in Forks didn’t spend that much time at the Reservation – the kids there had their own school and community after all – and this older and too direct version of Leah didn’t come across as the pleasant sociable type.

“Uh, just some people,” Bella evaded the question, she was uncomfortable, “I’m gonna go help Rachel and Sue in the kitchen now.”

Before Leah could say much else, Bella practically ran off and made herself busy with the food preparations.

////

“— _sucker_ in the area. I can smell it. On _her_ ,” Bella heard Leah’s voice as she rounded the corner of the dining room on the way to the kitchen.

She was carrying the empty porcelain bowl that had held the casserole; she intended to help with the dishes – it was the least she could do after the hearty Christmas feast. But she seemed to have walked in on Leah and – judging by the two gruff responses to whatever Leah had said – Billy and Harry, having a conversation. They hadn’t yet spotted her.

Bella wasn’t an eavesdropping kind of person, she really wanted to just keep on walking into the kitchen to announce her presence and let the trio’s conversation unfold or die out naturally, but something about the trio’s conversation caused her to stop in place.

If it hadn’t been for Leah’s voice hinting at something about a smell, ‘on her’, Bella wouldn’t have even cared what they talked about. But that strange observation of Leah’s hushed to two of the tribe’s Elders in conjunction with how she had acted shortly after she had arrived at the house – smelling the air and how she’d near-interrogated Bella before dinner – made Bella immediately realize that she was the topic of conversation. A shiver ran up her spine and she felt ill.

Bella didn’t realize that the conversation around the corner had ceased during her mini-mental breakdown until Leah came into her view, a scowl on her face. A scowl Bella realized was directed at her, as if Leah knew that Bella had eavesdropped. Bella could feel herself shrinking further under Leah’s cold steel-gray gaze; she suddenly wanted to go back home very much and very soon.

Demurely she eventually got into gear again and dropped off the dishes in the sink and went back to the dining room for a second batch. As she rounded the corner again, the sights of the Black-twins and Solomon huddled next to the TV entertaining Seth’s and Jacob’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fight-off, and Charlie, Billy, Harry, and Sue sitting at the table talking about something fishing-related filled Bella’s vision. It was a warm sight. What wasn’t a warm sight was Leah sitting a bit off to the end of the table, for all intents and purposes casually scrolling through her phone, only to discreetly shift her head up and sniff the air when Bella came into the room.

Bella saw it all, and she swore that if a human could have their hackles raised then Leah had that. Bella noticed that Leah was glaring at her from the side of her eye, trying to keep her obvious – to Bella completely unfounded and very confusing – distaste under wraps. That just about did it for her:

“Okay, what is your problem?” Bella demanded loudly from Leah.

The room practically froze; everyone seemed to stop what they were doing and turn to stare at her, almost as if she’d lost her mind. In her periphery Bella saw Jacob’s character being knocked off the stage and losing to Seth’s. Leah, however, seated almost directly in front of Bella albeit a few feet away, whipped her head towards Bella so fast that Bella worried she’d snap her own neck.

“Nothing,” Leah bit out, practically peeling her lip up over her upper teeth like a rabid dog.

Some part of Bella realized that something was wrong, something about _Leah_ was very wrong; she just wasn’t acting _normal_ , and it wasn’t really like her behavior could be easily explained away with normal teenage stuff. Somehow, Bella thought, Leah’s behavior transcended that of having a bad day, bad cramps or PMS – what with the sniffing and her scent-obsession that seemed centered on Bella, her obvious disdain for the young woman, and the interrogation earlier. Bella couldn’t for her life figure out what she had done to offend the tall Native American woman so much.

“Leah—” Harry suddenly piped up from across the table, his eyes stern and boring into Leah’s face.

Sue was looking between Leah and Bella anxiously and Charlie just looked dazed and confused.

“Whatever. I’m gonna go,” Leah said.

Instead of leaving through the front door – having to go past Bella in the dining room doorway to do so – she jerked open the patio door and practically escaped from the house that way. The thin door banged loudly against the wall and shook almost as it was about to be ripped off its hinges with Leah’s explosive exit.

Bella was left standing dumbstruck in the doorway. Apparently, Leah despised her so much that she couldn’t even consider walking past her. Dimly, not entirely aware of her actions, Bella walked to the table, sat down on the chair closest to her and just stared out the patio window at nothing.

“What the hell just happ—what the hell was that, Harry?” Bella could hear Charlie’s voice from somewhere to the side of her, but she didn’t look at him.

“I apologize for Leah’s behavior, I don’t know what got into her. I’m sorry, Isabella,” Sue lamented and walked over to Bella to put a comforting hand on her shoulders and apologize profusely on Leah’s account.

“She was glaring at me all night, since she came over. I don’t know what I’ve done to make her dislike me…” Bella mumbled, more to herself than to any of the adults at the table.

“I’ll talk to her when we get home,” Harry promised.

“Can we go home, Charlie? I’m not feeling too well,” Bella said, and Charlie immediately got up from his chair and approached her.

“Of course, Bells.”

Charlie helped Bella up and they proceeded to move for the front door. Charlie stayed behind for a few minutes to – Bella surmised – talk to Billy and Harry about the sudden way the night had been ruined while Bella went out to the car.

The drive home was mostly quiet; Charlie asked how Bella was feeling and if she wanted to talk about it when they rolled out of the Black-family’s yard, but Bella just mumbled incoherent replies to his questions and Charlie took the queue that she just wanted some peace and quiet.

By the time they arrived home it was almost midnight and after her shitshow of an evening Bella just wanted some peace and quiet, so she immediately went up to her room. Charlie said he wanted to catch a game he’d missed while they were gone – some international league of whichever sport he liked – so he stayed downstairs.

When Bella threw the door to her room open – still upset from how Leah had acted towards her, and now that she’d gotten some distance to it, on the verge of tears – Alice was sitting on her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Leah Clearwater has entered the chat*


	4. The connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **EDIT June 7th, 2020:** At some point while I was asleep this story passed 500 hits! It's not super much, I know, but I became so happy when I noticed! Thanks, you guyyyyyys <3

“Bella!” Alice exclaimed and rushed towards Bella with a speed she wasn’t prepared for.

She was taken aback as the lithe little pixie practically threw herself at her and almost toppled them both to the floor with the force. She gently tried to push her friend off to get some space.

“What are you doing here? I thought you said you’d only come back once I signaled with the window,” Bella said, the cumulative effect of everything that had already happened that evening coloring her voice with irritation.

Alice backed up, an anxious expression on her face. The evening had been a lot on Bella, to say the least, and she wasn’t really in the mood for surprises, even if Alice showing up was a pleasant such in comparison to the rest of it. At least she didn’t feel like crying any longer, she supposed that was a win in some way.

Weeks before Alice reappeared, before everything had started to go seriously wrong with Renée back in Phoenix and Bella had started to wish for someone to make her feel less alone, she hadn’t thought about Alice for ages. Now, especially with the last week in mind where Alice had stayed away, Bella realized how badly she’d missed her.

“I was worried about you! I needed to make sure you were alright because I couldn’t _see_ you, an—” Alice rambled.

She was working herself up to hysteria with worry over what had happened to Bella when she had been unable to utilize her gift and check up on her. Clearly something had happened judging by the hard and tired look in the young woman’s eyes as she had stepped inside the room.

“’See me’?” Bella questioned.

“Yes. I…” Alice fell quiet, unsure of how to continue without alarming Bella.

“Alice, have you been spying on me?” Bella asked, a wry smile on her face.

She was attempting banter to lighten the mood, poking fun at Alice’s choice of words, but Alice’s crestfallen expression at the teasing question caused Bella’s smile to drop.

“ _What!_ ” Bella hollered horrified, the implications of Alice’s guilty expression dawning on her – if she was trying to joke back at Bella, she had a hell of a poker face.

“I mean… I haven’t been spying _per se…_ ” Alice began uncertainly.

Bella’s brain might very well have received a BSOD for how well she dealt with the information Alice just shared.

When Bella regained her faculties, her face lit up like the red lights of a Christmas tree – fitting considering the season. What Bella got up to behind closed doors, especially considering she was a teenager, she felt was no one’s business but her own.

But then again, a part of her reasoned, if Alice only existed in her head – which still was a possibility, however small – then her ‘spying’ on Bella wasn’t really spying at all, seeing as she’d be a facet of Bella’s mind and privy to everything Bella experienced anyway. It was all headachingly complicated to the young woman.

She had begun to see Alice’s existence in a different light sometime during the past week. She couldn’t really put her finger on when it happened, but she had moved away from the theory and life-long assumption that Alice only existed in her head to the hypothesis that Alice was in fact a solid being that physically existed on the same plane as herself. That, of course, gave birth to a whole new array of questions about who and what Alice was – and in which way she had been surveilling Bella.

Suddenly Bella was enveloped in strong cold arms again, and her galloping mind came to a halt.

“You were getting carried away…” Alice mumbled, the side of her face pressed against Bella’s chest due to her short stature.

“Might have had something to do with you admitting that you’ve spied on me for God knows how long…” Bella muttered, still peeved.

“Come. Let’s sit and I’ll explain.”

“Fine,” Bella relented and let Alice’s surprisingly strong arms guide them to the bed.

Alice took a steadying breath, preparing to launch into what she knew would be on one hand a long-overdue conversation but on the other hand a very difficult one.

“I can see things. Things that are possible. It’s more complicated than that, but I guess one could say that I see the future,” Alice said, sitting opposite Bella on the bed in a matching cross-legged position.

“Right,” Bella snorted, unable to help herself.

“Bella. This,” Alice said and gestured between them, “is real. You will eventually have to come to terms with that no matter how strange and confusing it is. I know you can’t remember the first time we met, but I can. And I let you believe that I was just in your imagination as you grew older—”

“Why?” Bella demanded.

“Because I couldn’t… be around you any longer. You were getting older and… It was much easier for both of us, and in the long run kinder to you,” Alice smiled at her sadly, “But I never forgot about you, I kept… an eye on you. I _do_ see the future, that’s how I’ve always known where to find you. Among other things.”

“How?” Bella only seemed to be able to form mono-syllabic answers; what Alice was telling her was information she never thought she’d have to parse through.

“I’m sure you’ve picked up on it, that I don’t exactly look human?”

For as long as Bella could remember Alice had looked the same. Same height, never seeming to grow or age, same barely tamed black pixie-cut, the same haunting but fascinating red eyes, and the same pale skin. The few years that she’d been a regular part of Bella’s life – from when the younger girl was seven until she was almost ten – didn’t perhaps warrant too drastic changes in Alice’s appearance, but at least _something_ ought to change on a person in two and a half years. And as time had passed and Alice hadn’t changed it only reinforced Bella’s later, teenage theory that she had never really existed; that her strange traits had been the works of her younger self’s overactive mind. It was only now that she was confronted with the fact that Alice hadn’t changed _at all_ for some _ten years_ that the fact of it was unsettling. If she was even a real person, that was.

Now, Alice’s strange red eyes took on a whole new meaning to Bella. They could technically be explained away as colored lenses, but Bella – this adult, or almost-adult, version of her – doubted that. Up close, when studied in detail, there was a shine, a vivacity to them – emotion swirling in the red irises – that couldn’t possibly be mirrored by a pair of colored contacts. Bella ten years ago had never thought to analyze them to that extent, at least as far as she could remember. And that wasn’t even getting started on Alice’s extraordinarily pallid, almost absurdly perfect complexion.

“So, it’s not just cool contacts and really convincing body-paint?” Bella asked meekly.

Alice couldn’t help but chuckle at Bella’s confused-puppy expression.

“It’s not. There are other things too, but we can talk about those later. What I want to say is…” Alice took another breath, “that I’m not human.”

“Okayyyy…” Bella dragged the word out, waiting for Alice to tell her what she was instead, but Alice steered the conversation in another direction:

“You and I are connected, in a very special way. We have been since we met. Things were very confusing for me back then – they still are in many ways – which was why I only made sporadic appearances in your life. At times when you felt particularly distraught, I couldn’t keep myself away from you.”

“What does that even mean? And why me?”

“It’s… this is difficult for me Bella.”

“Triple that and you might get an idea of how hard this is for me. Someone I thought my entire life was just an imaginary friend – a pathetic childish comfort – because she just _disappeared_ one day, shows up out of the blue and turns out to be, what, an alien?”

“I’m not an alien. It’s just… I rely heavily on my gift – especially when it comes to you. But it seems I cannot see certain futures, as evident about what I clearly missed this evening. You were upset when you came home—” Alice interrupted herself, furrowing her brow.

Bella wanted to scream at the woman in front of her to tell her what she was, what she was talking _about,_ to just _explain for crying out loud!_ But raising her voice would attract Charlie’s attention and then she would end up getting no answers and a whole lot of unwanted questions instead, so she bit down on the impulse.

“…This conversation is too open-ended, I’m not used to this…” Alice continued then, a note of frustration in her voice, “Depending on what I decide to tell you, how you decide to react…it’s overwhelming.”

“You know… those of us that don’t have fancy future-seeing gifts, we still communicate with each other. We just go with the flow, take things the way they come, because we don’t have a choice – we can never be sure what’s coming. Just… I dunno, try that,” Bella suggested, tiredly rubbing her eyes.

“I _want_ to be honest with you, Bella, but I don’t want to lose you,” Alice said softly, almost too softly for Bella to hear her.

“Alice… I can’t promise you that I won’t be scared or shocked, but I really will try my best to keep an open mind. You mean a lot to me, you have always had a place in my life, even if I have misunderstood in what way for most of it. I can’t remember all the times I’ve seen you, but those I _do_ remember are some of my most cherished memories,” Bella professed tenderly, something almost serene filling Alice’s expression as she did, “you always helped and grounded me, distracted me from mom’s craziness. You were always kind, never demanded anything from me. You always knew the right thing to say, and I always felt safe with you.”

“Bella…” Alice said thickly, her voice overcome with emotion.

Her rose red eyes were swirling vividly, practically glued to Bella’s chocolate brown counterparts as the young woman explained what Alice meant to her all those years ago.

“I… I feel safe with you now too. But it’s confusing, I’ve had to reevaluate a lot of things about my life in very little time.”

“I will give you space if you need it to think things through, even if that would be… difficult. We haven’t talked for almost eight years, but I think I can make do with another week.”

“No. At least not yet. If this… if this is real, I-I want to know—" Bella cleared her throat, she was getting very emotional all of a sudden, “I want to know you. Please just tell me.”

In Bella’s eyes Alice looked afraid of where their conversation was going. She had so many questions; why Alice had this strange… fixation to her in the first place; how they had met, and why; why Alice had essentially disappeared from her life for so long if Bella was as precious to her as she claimed; what it meant now that she had come back… she was sure she could come up with more if given a bit of time.

“My kind, we… well we have this ability – or possibility, I guess is a better word – of connecting with another person on a very deep level – I know it sounds ridiculously cheesy and romantic. The person we connect with that way becomes our… _mate_ ,” Alice’s voice wavered slightly, “but the connection is… well it’s only supposed to happen between two of my kind, is what I’ve been told – not with a human. This person practically becomes our tether to the world… Think, maybe, soulmate?” Alice said, ending her explanation in genuine confusion because she wasn’t sure it would make Bella any wiser – she wasn’t even sure humans could experience anything similar themselves, she’d never heard of anything like it.

About halfway through Alice’s beginning statement Bella realized what she worked herself up to say; Bella was her – Alice’s – such person. That was it, Bella knew. Her face took on the same red color as earlier in their conversation, and Alice winced. A few seconds later another – much more unsavory – thought intruded upon Bella’s already harrowed mind that caused her to physically recoil away from Alice.

“It wasn’t like that!” Alice burst out, panicked, a millisecond after Bella decided to call her out on her extremely inappropriate and borderline illegal proclivities.

“B-but I was a kid…” Bella mumbled, trying and utterly failing to understand.

“It wasn’t sexual in any way, shape or form I _promise_ you that. That’s sick, and I would never have allowed myself to think that way about you, mate or not. I would rather have removed myself from the face of this earth than to even think much less act on those kinds of thoughts,” Alice pleaded with Bella to understand.

“So, what was it then? What made a kid so… attractive,” Bella winced at her own choice of words, “to you or whatever this connection is?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone of my kind that know why they connected with the person they did. My kind isn’t… unified, we don’t particularly like each other. Compared to human society, we’re few, decentralized – not really a society at all. We just _are_ , we don’t have a seat of scientific discovery where we try to understand these things.”

“Okay, so we met, and we connected – or I mean you connected with me – and you decided to, what, follow me around the states all these years to spy on me?”

“Follow you, yes. Spy on you, no. I just wanted you to be happy and safe, I cared about you very much – more than I’ve ever cared about anything in my entire existence. I only pick up what my five senses tell me, even if they too are… stronger than yours. My gift only allows me to see glimpses of possible futures, and they are always rooted in acts and decisions – it gives me no further knowledge of the person they are centered around, like thoughts, memories or feelings.”

“And now?” Bella asked shakily – unable to decide if she found it all bizarre and borderline creepy, or if everything Alice had confessed made her feel flattered and valued.

“I still feel that way about you, the connection is still there and probably always will be. I’m never going to be able to stop caring about you, wanting you to be happy and safe—”

“Okay so…” Bella began, intending to ask a very pointed question but trailing off as it struck her how awkward and uncomfortable the answer could be.

“It’s… primarily emotional. The connection. I want you to be happy and safe, and I want to offer you that safety and happiness. But I’m going to be honest with you; ‘emotional’ for me, my kind, certainly differs from your definition of the word,” Alice looked conflicted, as if she was debating whether to go on or not, “Now that you’re… There’s another attraction now, too. You’ve grown into your own person, during all these years I’ve stayed away from you, and my affections for you, my mate, are diff— _could_ be different, more than just a distant protector—”

“Wait okay, “ Bella interrupted her – she was doing that a lot. “so, you weren’t attracted to me when I was a kid – I’m grateful for that, by the way – but you _are_ attracted to me now?”

“Well, yes. You’re kind, a caring loyal daughter. You’re so intelligent, and self-assured – despite your… unconventional upbringing. And you’re beautiful, of course,” Alice explained as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her, and Bella fought and failed to hide a severe blush.

“But it’s much more than just… ordinary attraction. Feelings work differently for my kind; we operate on another wavelength if you will. I want to make it clear – and I can’t stress this enough; I will never require more from you than you want to give me. I’ll be a friend, or protector – now that I’m back in your life, prepared to stay here. I want to be _part_ of your life now, close, but I will keep my distance if that’s what you need. I-I will even _leave_ if you want me to,” Alice proclaimed, her voice cracking slightly at the end.

Bella was completely and utterly flabbergasted. The blush that had assaulted her midway through Alice’s proclamation of attraction intensified to the point that she hid her face in her hands. As happy as the validation of Alice’s compliments made her feel she couldn’t look away from everything else she’d just been told; she felt like her life had turned into a parody steeplechase – the more obstacles she overcame the more were plopped down right in front of her.

Bella had accepted that it was _highly_ unlikely that Alice was in her head at this point, she’d accepted that their relationship began over a decade ago at a time Bella couldn’t even fully remember. That for all intents and purposes Alice wasn’t human; she had insisted she wasn’t an alien, so in her mind that left ‘superhuman sci-fi movie assassin’ or ‘escaped vat-grown experiment’ or an amalgamation of the two.

She could even stretch herself to accept that said relationship and connection between them was _serious business_ for Alice – even if she still felt some lingering discomfort at the thought. Alice was attracted to her in ways Bella wasn’t convinced that she had fully divulged – she’d kept her wording too vague.

Then there were the hurdles of Alice essentially being psychic, and what _exactly_ she was instead of human – and Bella knew those were going to be tougher to overcome.

“Bella…?” Alice asked and gingerly laid a hand on her shoulder when Bella had kept her face hidden in her hands for close to two minutes.

“This is… a lot,” Bella rubbed her face with her hands as if to wake herself up, then sighed and was unable to stifle an interrupting yawn, “and part of me is sort of freaked out because what if this is just the sickest most bizarre dream I’ve ever had, or what if my mother’s craziness was passed down to me. Then another part of me just… wants to be cool with this. I… don’t know why, and I probably shouldn’t – not yet, at least – but I trust you. I know I can, and I _want_ to, deal with this.”

“I envy you for that, you know. Humans are good at changing their outlook on things, adapting. It’s—you’re tired,” Alice interrupted herself when she noticed that Bella tried to suppress another yawn.

Bella was thankful that she’d happened to get an out from the conversation; she wanted to at least get _some_ sleep that night and the piece of strangeness-cake that she’d been served so far was enough for one night.

“Let’s talk more tomorrow, I really just want to sleep on everything for now,” she said, yawning again and stretching her stiff limbs.

Alice made an affirmative noise, and when Bella got up from the bed she did too. She silently made her way over to the window, preparing to vanish again like she had last time, and Bella barely caught her before she did.

The prospect of Alice leaving so suddenly after everything that had been shared between them that night filled Bella with a sudden, foreign sense of dread. Before she could halt herself, she exclaimed:

“Wait! Please stay Alice.”

She wasn’t sure why she was asking her to stay; logistically it wasn’t a well-thought out suggestion considering she only had a standard-size bed.

“Okay,” Alice said and turned around, a small smile playing on her face.

Shortly afterwards Bella crept under the covers of her bed, having shrugged out of her pants but left her t-shirt on for decency’s sake. She was puzzled to find that Alice was just standing in the middle of the room, the corner of a lip anxiously trapped between her teeth as she looked anywhere but on Bella or the bed. Frozen on the spot, the tiny non-human could as well have been carved from a slab of marble for how little she moved – Bella briefly wondered if she was even breathing.

“You can come and lay down on the bed if you like,” Bella decided to say as she rolled over to her side with her back against Alice.

“Okay…” Alice breathed out, and the bed dipped as Bella’s strange friend settled down next to her, over the covers.

“I promise that everything will make sense soon…” Bella thought she heard Alice whisper quietly a while later.

She fell asleep shortly after as a gentle hand and arm carefully positioned itself on her shoulder and along her side – in an almost-embrace, still above the covers – offering some comfort in the aftermath of Bella’s hectic evening and night.

////

Bella stirred awake from sleep by the chirping of birds outside her window. She cracked an eye open and glanced on the alarm clock on the bedside table. 10:16 AM. She smacked sleepily a few times; her mouth was dry. Her shoulders and back were cold, and she wondered if her window had accidentally been left open. As she was about to turn around and check she realized she was caught in an embrace; she was tousled in the sheets, but someone was molded to her shirt-clad back and an arm was slung over her waist. Bella instinctively froze, last night still temporarily forgotten in her groggy mind.

“You snore when you sleep,” a bell-like voice stated from behind her.

Bella relaxed at its familiarity. Alice. And with that knowledge came last night’s memories. Leah acting out. Alice explaining things – strange things. Practically supernatural things.

“Ugh…” Bella grouched.

“It’s endearing!” Alice giggled from behind her.

Bella wasn’t used to waking up with other people in her bed, it had in fact never happened before. With a surge of effort Bella flopped on her back and kicked her sheet off, Alice picking up the cue and moving away in time.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” Alice said softly.

“’morning,” Bella mumbled, self-conscious about having Alice so close to her – she probably smelled sweaty, and her morning-breath wasn’t exactly fragrant, “did you stay here all night?”

“Yes… was that okay?” Alice asked, uncertain.

“Sure. I mean, I sort of invited you,” Bella smiled wryly.

Now that Alice was a few inches away Bella had more leeway on the bed, and her body began to pick up the heat she should have felt from being wrapped up in her sheet with a t-shirt still on. Without really thinking – and Bella would have hated if someone had done it to her without asking – she reached out and placed her palm flat against Alice’s upper chest, closer to her clavicle than anything else.

Alice’s eyes widened in shock when Bella touched her. Bella didn’t even have time to realize what she was doing and remove her intruding hand on her own volition, before Alice shuffled further away and folded her gaze away from Bella’s face to the mattress. Bella was left puzzled, staring at her own hand that had moments before touched Alice through her thin shirt, disconcerted by the apparent chill from Alice’s body that had bled through the fabric.

Part of Bella recognized that the strange chill had always been present; in her childhood memories Alice had sometimes hugged her or held her hand briefly, in which her cold skin had been impossible to miss. But again, Bella had always assumed that feeling had never been real on account of her past belief that Alice only existed in her head. There was a stark difference between then and now that Bella knew Alice was real.

“Why are you so cold…?” Bella breathed out, and Alice met her eyes again – a sad smile adorning her face.

“Not human, remember? My body doesn’t produce any heat, so I never become warmer than my surroundings.”

“How’s that possible? Wouldn’t your organs shut down? It’s like, what, 70 degrees in here? 20-something outside?” Bella asked, much concerned about her friend’s health and wellbeing.

“My body is very… resilient,” Alice began, not really wanting to get into her body’s biological state, “and I’m only ever confronted with the reality of my cold skin when I touch a human because of how warm you are in comparison.”

“You can use the shower if you want to warm up,” Bella offered.

Alice gave Bella a loving smile; she had known the human would offer her the shower. She was moved by the care Bella showed for her and it was much appreciated. She didn’t know how to express that appreciation though.

“Thanks Bella, but it’s okay. It doesn’t bother me,” she settled on saying.

“B-but—”

“I like the feeling of warmth, but I don’t need it to function,” Alice answered Bella’s question before she could say it.

Bella thought Alice’s reassurance over; she didn’t produce body heat and she claimed she didn’t need it to stay alive. She was skeptical – surely Alice could still freeze, go into hypothermia, even if she was a mutated human or whatever she was? Maybe just at _very_ cold temperatures, Bella concluded. Anything else made no scientific sense. But then she’d also said that she _liked_ the feeling of warmth…

Bella thought about that, specifically she considered offering to hold Alice and warm her up. She supposed that she’d never succeed with warming Alice up entirely, because if her body didn’t produce any heat and it bled out added heat like an ordinary body would, Bella’s added heat wouldn’t be enough unless she laid down _on top of_ her. But maybe just holding her was something, maybe she would appreciate it? In a way, Bella felt obligated to at least offer because of everything Alice had done for her over the years – the true meaning of it all only having been revealed to her the day before.

“I… I can hold you. To warm you up, I mean. For a while, if you like…” Bella whispered and blushed at how silly and awkward her suggestion was.

Alice had figuratively seen the gears turning in Bella’s head, and by focusing on her gift – narrowing in her gift on Bella – she’d seen her decision the moment it had been taken. But that didn’t mean it was any less surprising. A non-physical warmth this time spread through her chest, feelings of affection for the young selfless woman – and another much more horrifying urge – blossomed in Alice. She tempered the latter one with the well-practiced hammer of self-restraint.

“If you want to,” Alice said trying to keep her giddiness under wraps – she didn’t want to come across as too excited about having Bella’s arms around her and being physically close to the human.

“Turn around,” Bella instructed.

She wasn’t ready for the intimacy a long face-to-face embrace with Alice would entail. The thought of it wasn’t off-putting to Bella, but it made her heart gallop and her palms sweaty for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of.

Alice did what she was told, and shortly afterwards Bella shuffled closer and tentatively wrapped her arms around Alice’s waist. She didn’t move as close as possible at first – her heart was beating too fast and she was nervous of what the act of embracing Alice with her entire body meant.

It soon became apparent that it wouldn’t be comfortable for long to embrace Alice while keeping a foot of space between their bodies as if the tiny non-human carried a deadly disease. At that Bella managed to let go of her insecurities and moved in all the way to wrap her bigger frame around Alice’s back.

Alice was practically hovering on cloud nine. She’d been reluctant to divulge it and settled on keeping quiet about it for now, but the truth was that because of the mate-connection between them – even if Bella couldn’t feel it – the human’s touch served more purpose for Alice than simply warmth. Even if the heat from Bella’s warm body seeping through Alice’s sweater felt very good, the feeling and meaning behind Bella simply holding her and being close to her meant so much more.

For one, it meant that Bella wasn’t afraid of her or repulsed by having someone like her – still simply known as a ‘non-human’ – close to herself. It was also evidence that Bella trusted her, that she felt safe with her. It meant that there was a possibility that she could eventually reciprocate the affection Alice felt one day. That wasn’t anything Alice would ever demand or base her future presence in Bella’s life on, however.

She stiffened as her enhanced senses made her react to the tiniest of Bella’s movements in a millisecond; the young woman shifted her face into the nape of Alice’s neck and inhaled. For her kind scent meant many things; it was heavily associated with survival – being able to identify possible threats or for locating and savoring food, but it also played part in social connections. Every person – human or otherwise – had their own scent, and between mates scenting could be a very intimate thing. Or so Alice had been told by the occasional kin she had traveled with prior to meeting Bella in 2007.

The primal part of Alice, the one that thought of Bella as _her human_ and _mine_ , shivered at the warmth and attention Bella was showering her with. She had to actively fight the urge to turn around and dive below Bella’s jaw to revel in the most concentrated batch of the human’s near-intoxicating fragrance. That wouldn’t be okay, that would be unacceptable behavior, a much larger part of Alice knew, and with that the urge subsided.

“You smell good, did you already shower?” Bella asked in a mumble.

She was confused at the smell that emanated from Alice’s hair and skin; pine and something that reminded her of a clean forest creek. With a startling realization Bella recognized it from how her own bedsheets smelled, which she had noticed for the first time the day she’d found Alice’s note and subsequently gotten a whiff of every time she’d laid down on it since. She’d gotten used to it, having assumed it was just Charlie’s fabric softener and hadn’t thought much else about it until then.

Alice didn’t reply immediately on account of the strange rumbling she was currently emitting from her throat or chest. Each of her exhalations sounded somewhat like the purring of a cat to Bella – for lack of a better description – just something much bigger than a house cat. Bella had meant to ask about that too, but the question of Alice’s scent had taken precedence.

“No,” Alice said finally in between deep rumbling breaths she seemed unable to get a grip on, “I just smell that way.”

“Strange… I don’t remember this,” Bella mumbled, and thought hard back to a few occasions where she’d hung out with Alice when she was a kid.

Back then, they’d sat close to each other on Bella’s bed when she showed Alice some of her games, and she often ended up in her lap eventually – it became a sort of repertoire that Alice would at some point during her visit tease Bella by ignoring her until she’d cling to her friend’s back and shoulders, or throw herself at her just to get a reaction. She could, however, only remember a clean and very neutral scent – almost like… flour – surrounding Alice whenever they were close enough to smell each other. This fresh, crisp and strangely alluring scent was new, she’d never smelled something like it before.

There was a stutter in the strange sound that Alice was giving off, almost as if she thought of something to say but clamped down on it in the last second, and Bella deducted that it probably had to do with her memory-related comment. She was reluctant to ask further questions about why and how Alice’s scent was so different and how someone could even smell like this naturally, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. At least not yet. The past 24 hours had been intense enough.

“I have to go down to Charlie soon… It’s Christmas Day, I can’t stay cooped up in here all day long,” she said eventually, not really sure how Alice would take it – Bella hated the idea of making her sad.

“I know. It’s okay.”

It went unsaid – because of how obvious it was – that Alice couldn’t follow downstairs. Or even go out the window and come in the front door. Bella felt tempted to suggest it on the off chance that she would agree, just so that she could make sure that Charlie saw her too. But she knew that wasn’t currently realistic; she had no way to explain to Charlie who Alice was when it would turn out that he saw her too. He would immediately know that she didn’t live in Forks and Bella had never even mentioned her friend to him before. Not to mention how she’d even begin to explain the red eyes and cold skin.

“You can stay up here if you want. I don’t… where do you even spend your time, like the past week?”

“Outside. In the woods for the most part,” Alice said quietly – she wasn’t rumbling pleasantly anymore, and Bella instantly missed it.

She had suspected and feared just that. That sort of fell in line with her hypothesis that Alice had escaped from a facility somewhere; there was no point in her living in the forest away from people if she wasn’t hiding from someone or something, Bella reasoned.

“I know you were here in my room during the week, I recognized your smell from my sheets. It’s… I mean I would’ve liked if you’d asked me, but it’s okay. You know that I would never tell anyone about you, right?”

“I know that Bella. And… I’m sorry. I just wanted to be close to something of yours, something that smelled like you…” Alice admitted, her voice tiny and ashamed.

“You can stay here now, whenever you like. If you need a bed and shower. Just try not to scare the shit out of me by sitting here all stealthily when I come home,” Bella said, and chuckled into Alice’s neck.

“I’ll try,” Alice said, a teasing lilt in her voice that told Bella she wouldn’t be trying too hard on that front.

“I’m gonna go shower now and then I’ll go downstairs for a couple of hours. Feel free to borrow my headphones if you wanna listen to some music,” Bella said and disentangled herself from the small non-human in her bed.

When Bella finally arrived downstairs, she heard voices from the living room. One was Charlie’s and the other was a female voice that she hadn’t exactly missed from the evening before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …cuddles!
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment about what you're thinking & feeling! :D


	5. Revelation

“What are you doing here?” Bella asked as she came into the living room interrupting Charlie’s conversation with Leah Clearwater – she felt like she asked that question a lot these days.

Both turned to look at Bella, with Charlie looking distinctly uncomfortable and guilty at being confronted with letting Leah into the house. Bella had been adamant about that part last night when they had driven home from the reservation when Bella’s sadness from the events at the Blacks’ house had turned into indignation.

“I was gonna tell you Bells, but Harry only called 15 min—”

“My pops forced me to come over and apologize for yesterday,” Leah said, “which I was gonna do anyways you know, but…”

Charlie was annoyed that Leah interrupted him, but on the other hand he had a feeling that he should probably stay out of the conversation anyway. He supposed an old geezer like himself couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of female teenage friendship. Or whatever was going on between Leah and his daughter. He wasn’t exactly sure what had transpired the night before and Bella hadn’t wanted to talk about it in the car on the way back home.

“Uh-huh,” Bella just replied, stone-cold.

The way Leah had behaved towards her last night had really stung Bella – especially considering that she’d thought of Leah as a very good friend at a point in her life and had been excited to see her again and hopefully rekindle that friendship.

“You girls gonna be fine?” Charlie asked, and at Bella’s withering glare – she really couldn’t help it, hastily added, “I’m just gonna go check something in the… garage.”

Charlie hurried out of the living room, not equipped to handle what was going on between Bella and Leah with his poor off-duty social skills. He would naturally step in if the situation got out of hand again – he’d never let anyone hurt his daughter and get away without consequences – but he saw no reason to stick around when he clearly wasn’t wanted or needed in that moment. Besides, he figured he’d hear the yelling from the garage if things escalated.

Bella and Leah just stared silently at each other for a while, sizing each other up.

“So…” Leah began, and reached back to scratch her scalp, “I’m sorry for being a dick to you yesterday.”

“Okay.”

“Come on Bella, give me something to work with here,” Leah urged.

Leah was clearly uncomfortable with the situation, but she deserved to stew in it for a while more for all Bella cared.

She began approaching Bella and the shorter woman reflexively tensed up; a picture of the hateful scowl she’d shot her last night fluttered through her mind. Just as Bella was gradually relaxing, she caught Leah tilting her head just slightly in line with hers and sniffing the air discreetly. Bella would have missed it entirely if she hadn’t kept her full focus on Leah’s face.

In fact, Leah hadn’t been fully conscious of her action – it was all reflexes at that point.

“Will you cut that shit out!” Bella shouted angrily at her.

“What?” Leah asked trying to feign innocence.

Bella fixed her with an unimpressed scowl.

“Smelling the air, smelling me. What the hell is wrong with you, honestly. If I smell bad just tell me and get it over with.”

Bella was 100% fed up with everything that had to do with Leah. It was solely by the grace of Bella’s kind disposition that she hadn’t already called for Charlie to toss her out of the house, and even that grace and patience was wearing thin.

“Sorry,” Leah said, and she looked genuinely sorry to Bella, “I have a… sensitive nose. You smell good actually.”

Leah clearly hadn’t reacted to Bella’s smell the same way as yesterday, and Bella supposed that was a small victory at least, the older woman even complimented her! However odd the compliment had been. But something about Leah’s self-proclaimed ‘sensitive nose’ made Bella pause.

 _This is so weird_ , she thought to herself, _and who even has **that** sensitive of a nose?_

No one else at the dinner yesterday had seemed to react at all to how Bella had smelled, and she herself hadn’t either. She’d showered, napped for an hour or two and then she and Charlie had left for the Blacks’ house – she hadn’t exactly worked up a sweat in that short time. That meant it wasn’t body-odor Leah had smelled.

The only other person who seemed so attuned to Bella’s smell was Alice.

A shiver ran down Bella’s spine; what if Leah was different like Alice was? Suspecting your distant fallen-out friend was superhuman because she acted aggressively and was obsessed with scents would have been absurd in any normal situation, but in the light of all she’d been confronted with in the last week and a half it didn’t seem as unlikely a conclusion.

Leah didn’t have red eyes or too pale skin though; her eyes were a solid dark brown and her skin was a rich and warm tan – she didn’t _look_ like Alice in any way. There was something weird about Leah though, Bella thought, and she’d be damned if she didn’t at least try to figure out what that was. And she decided that if she turned out to be wrong, no one would be any wiser and she could just chalk her suspicions up to paranoia as a side effect of everything that was going on with Alice.

“Uh, Bella?” Leah asked and waved a hand in front of Bella’s face.

“Sorry, I zoned out a bit. I… I guess you’re forgiven. Still not okay how you were all over the place yesterday, I looked forward to seeing you because of how long it’s been,” Bella said after blinking back to the present.

A guilty expression flashed over Leah’s face.

“Yeah… I’m sorry again. I’ll make it up to you! Let’s hang this week, after Christmas and New Years before the break is over,” she suggested.

Bella would have to think that over thoroughly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to put herself in a situation with Leah that could possibly blow up in her face again.

“Sure,” she replied nonetheless, to placate the older and a bit scary woman.

“Anyways, I better be getting home. The family is waiting.”

“Yeah, talk to you later,” Bella said and led Leah the short distance to the door.

Bella took a few minutes to compose herself after the short but intense second meeting with Leah before she decided to call Charlie in for lunch and the opening of Christmas-gifts, but a flash of something bright at the top of the stairs caught her attention. Alice was standing there, a worried and somewhat broody expression on her face.

“Uh, Alice?” Bella asked quietly, she didn’t want to risk Charlie overhearing her in case he’d come out from the garage.

“I couldn’t see you again,” Alice explained and before Bella could stop her or suggest that it was a bad idea, Alice descended the stairs.

She practically floated down it in a gracefully manner that had Bella worried she’d trip or fall with how little attention she seemed to be paying the steps and handrail. Bella was used to regularly stumbling on said stairs herself, so she might have been projecting a bit.

“But now I can,” the short little woman said, a note of confusion lacing her tinkling soprano-quality voice.

Alice’s face was wrinkled up in frustration as she rounded Bella’s still frame. She walked towards the center of the living room and thus towards the door to the garage from which Charlie was bound to come out any second, and Bella’s heart was hammering so fast. She supposed that Alice could be held responsible for her own actions if she ended up showing herself to Charlie – and secretly a part of Bella wanted that to happen just so that she could be completely sure that he could see her as well and finally put that worry to rest.

“There’s someth—” she began, and Bella’s heart flew into her throat – practically jumped out of it – for an entirely different reason.

In the blink of an eye Alice suddenly leaped across the room, spinning 180 degrees mid-air, to land next to the TV and nearly toppling it over. Bella’s eyes almost bulged out of their sockets at the spectacular show of agility; she would have been convinced that Alice was the most impressive acrobat she’d ever seen if it wasn’t for how she coiled up like a panther and _hissed_ furiously.

Bella’s otherwise unhealthily dormant fight-or-flight response flared – leaning heavily against flight – and adrenaline suddenly thundered through her system. There was still a couch and the entire living room between the two of them, but even from that distance Bella saw how the abrupt animalistic anger radiating from Alice had contorted her usually beautiful and serene face, her curiously vivid red eyes were now pitch black.

Legs spread in a combative stance, arms and fingers splayed, a disproportionately loud and vicious growling rumbled from her small body; Bella thought Alice looked ready to fling herself at her and tear her limb from limb. She began to fear that Alice was preparing to do just that when she threateningly flexed her hands, and so she sucked in a breath to scream – she’d never been that scared in her 17-year long life.

“Bella?” Charlie asked from behind the slightly ajar door leading to the garage – his voice piercing the tension in the room.

Alice immediately flicked her attention to the source of the sound, and like a needle to a balloon, Bella’s breath left her in a heavy gust as she sluggishly tracked where her friend’s stormy gaze settled. The low threatening rumble started up anew – something else entirely to the soothing and all-around wholesome rumbling she’d exuded up in Bella’s bedroom 45 minutes ago.

“…No…” Bella pleaded instinctually when the furious non-human seemed to redirect her blistering anger at the person walking up to the other side of the door.

Bella stumbled forward reflexively, she couldn’t let her innocent and unaware father be the target of Alice’s fury if he came into the room. Alice’s gaze bounced back to her and she seemed to suddenly freeze up – likely at the fumbling panic etched into every aspect of Bella.

The door to the garage creaked open slowly and one half of Charlie’s torso became visible in the doorway and the tension in the living room skyrocketed. He would have only seen a panicked and trembling Bella if he’d looked straight into the room – Alice was standing in the corner of the doorway’s adjacent wall – but he stepped back to toss the forgotten towel he’d wiped his oily hands on back onto the workbench in his garage.

In that fraction of a moment Alice regained some of her mental faculties, and she snapped her eyes back to Bella whom was still stumbling towards the door – only a few seconds had passed so far. The human had time to register the apologetic and pained expression in her friend’s gaze before her form smeared out towards her – for which she didn’t have time to steel herself, thinking Alice was going to slam into her. Bella felt a whoosh of air as something her sight couldn’t pick out swished past her and up the stairs, at which point her brain had forwarded the signal to her muscles and she skidded to a stop on the carpet.

 _What the fuck just happened,_ Bella thought to herself and sagged down to the floor feeling half-delirious.

“What was that sound?” Charlie asked as he came into the living room.

Upon seeing his daughter slumped on her knees on the floor, he rushed over to her.

“Bella! What’s the matter?”

His first thought was that Leah had injured his daughter and he’d been unable to hear her call for help from the garage. Only the distraught look on his daughter’s face made him put aside his want to hop into his police cruiser and drive straight over to the Clearwaters’.

“I’m fine dad, just had to, uh… let loose some frustrations,” she lied when she got up from the floor.

“Really,” Bella reassured him when he put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her with concern, “Leah showing up out of the blue stirred up some nasty feelings.”

“She didn’t hurt you or anything?”

“No, Leah wasn’t threatening me,” Bella said – the full meaning behind her words lost to Charlie.

He felt reluctant to pry; he trusted that Bella would tell him anything he _needed_ to know, or other things she felt better from by sharing with him. Her possibly volatile confrontation with Leah and subsequent thrashing around in the living room – judging by the sounds Charlie had heard from the garage – felt like a teenage thing. He was bad at teenage things, _especially_ female teenage things. His record as a parent was spotty at best – of which he was ashamed, having only been an active parent for Bella’s first seven years and the past two weeks.

“As long as you’re okay Bells,” he said and pulled her in for a hug.

“Probably gonna meet and hang with her later this week, test things out. In a public setting,” Bella smiled and tried to force her body to relax, to wind down the adrenaline-surge.

She was still shaken from Alice’s meltdown, but she was doing a good job of covering it up for Charlie. He couldn’t be allowed to even begin to suspect what had taken place before he had walked inside the room, it’d raise _a lot_ of unwanted questions and concerns Bella didn’t want to deal with.

“I don’t understand why you’re gonna hang if all you do is fight?” Charlie questioned.

“We didn’t exactly fight… Well, okay yesterday was weird, but she really did apologize for that. I freaked out after she left. It’s just… we used to hang when we were kids, and I was closest with Leah out of all the kids on the Rez. I sort of want to reconnect… Is that stupid?”

“Not at all Bells. I know Leah is a good kid deep down. Harry doesn’t talk about it, but I get the vibes that she’s troubled. Call it a sixth sense from being a cop for 20 years. Just stay safe, okay?”

“I will dad,” Bella promised while inwardly wincing at how _not_ safe she had been just minutes earlier with Alice in the same room.

“Now, let’s get some food and open the gifts! Bet there’s something worthwhile on TV too.”

////

Bella didn’t see Alice for several days after that.

Sometime later the same afternoon that Alice had her meltdown – as Bella had begun calling it – she snapped out of the strange autopilot-mode she’d regressed into in order to get through Christmas Day and settled down enough to think what had happened through. And it had occurred to her that her safety had truly been in danger, however briefly. Something had told Bella that underestimating Alice was a bad idea – and that was before the swishing and hissing and growling. _That_ had made it perfectly clear how non-human Alice was.

But it only took two days for Bella to start missing her, despite everything. Where Christmas Day and the day after that had been filled with restless anxiety, a sense of dread and nights plagued by increasingly bizarre dreams, the rest of the days between the Christmas holidays and New Years’ were filled with sadness and a different type of anxiety.

Bella worried Alice wouldn’t come back, and on the night of the 27th she caught herself leaving her window slightly ajar in the hope that Alice would show up. Hopefully Bella would wake up if she did, so that she could see her friend again. But Alice never showed up to her knowledge.

Leah and her texted on and off those days, after Leah had looked up her number and reached out. She seemed willing to try and repair the rift that had formed between them, but when Bella made an uncharacteristic suggestion that they meet up for food at the diner in town, Leah had declined. And she continued to decline the two following suggestions on later days too with the excuse that ‘something had come up’ that she needed to deal with first. When Bella had asked what had happened, she’d been given suspiciously little information; some ‘drama on the Rez’, Leah had put it.

Bella sent away a few messages in the group chat she had with her friends out of boredom on the 29th – after Leah’s third consecutive rain-check; Mike and his family were away hiking like he’d said they would be, Jessica was in Seattle, and Eric didn’t even reply – probably because of being glued in front of his computer. Angela was still in Forks and agreed to meet up with Bella for dinner to escape her family for a bit. She was a very loving person – and Bella was sure that her family was equally nice – but she had two younger twin brothers whom she described as being ‘adorable but stupidly hyperactive dorks’.

Meeting with Angela had been nice; Bella was convinced that it was impossible to have a bad time with her. They’d talked about what they’d done during the holidays, some of the gifts they’d gotten, random small talk about the school, and Angela’s photography project with the school’s newspaper. Bella had opened up about her mother; Angela was easy to talk to and she was very non-judgmental. She didn’t go into too much detail but managed to explain that her mother was mentally ill, not physically like she’d let her friends believe because of how much easier that was, but that Renée was getting the right medication now and was improving.

Bella realized how bored and lonely she felt when she came home from her dinner with Angela and almost immediately sunk into the same funk that she’d tried to escape by going outside. Charlie was asleep in front of the TV; he had been off work for most of the week on account of the holidays, but his position as Chief of Police in the small town warranted that he was on-call for more serious cases should one come up while he was at home. Forks was mostly calm and quiet, and apart from a few drunken misunderstandings, one case of some teenagers egging a house, and one case of a half-naked man running around his neighbor’s lawn with a pink plastic flamingo there hadn’t been any disturbances that had required Charlie’s intervention.

Bella left him to it, he needed the rest. Morosely she headed up the stairs and to her room; she figured she could study a bit. She was caught up with her classes, but it couldn’t hurt to double-check that the progress she’d made in her courses in Phoenix matched with Forks High’s junior-year curriculum, and maybe even get ahead for once.

When she arrived in her room she went over to her bed, picked up one of her pillows and inhaled sharply from it. That act had become somewhat of a ritual for Bella the past days. She’d tried not to use that pillow so as not to corrupt the smell on it, but it was a losing battle; Alice’s scent had been wearing off. At least up until that moment. As Bella inhaled a large smile spread across her face as she was flooded with happiness and relief at the fresh batch of Alice’s smell that permeated the pillow.

Alice had been in her room while she was gone. Bella knew she _should_ feel irritated at having her privacy ignored, but she couldn’t care less at that point – it meant that she wasn’t gone! Bella hurried to the window in her room, maybe Alice was even close by. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the small silhouette of her friend standing at the tree line on the edge of the house’s lawn, peering up at her window.

“You can come up if you like,” Bella unlatched the window and spoke out into the frigid evening air.

Before she could react, Alice was suddenly perched on the great limb of the oak that was stretched out just outside her window and she startled. The light from her room illuminated Alice’s face, and Bella was momentarily stunned at the reminder of how beautiful she was. A small uncertain smile was adorning Alice’s features, and her vivid red eyes seemed especially bright for some reason. Bella reflexively moved out of the way as Alice practically _vaulted_ herself through the window as if she was auditioning for the 2020 Olympics’ Gymnastics-team.

Bella couldn’t help but take a few steps forward and envelop Alice in a hug as she came to a standstill a few feet from the window. Alice was stiff in her embrace – and much colder than usual thanks to the chilling temperature outside – but she was gradually relaxing, and Bella couldn’t seem to care anyway.

“I missed you,” the young woman mumbled into Alice’s shoulder.

“I missed you too, but… I shouldn’t be here,” Alice replied.

“Why?”

“Because… of what happened, Bella. I don’t deserve to see you, and I don’t deserve _this_ ,” Alice bemoaned, pulling away from Bella’s embrace.

“Why…?” Bella asked again, repeating herself only because that was all she seemed to manage at the jarring departure of Alice’s solid form from her embrace.

Alice seemed to contemplate something to Bella.

“Are you checking the future?” Bella couldn’t stop the question from jumping out.

Alice’s face twisted into a smile again, if only briefly.

“Old habit,” she said, “listen… I’m not _good_. Not for you, not for anyone. I should stay away from—”

“What! N-no!” Bella interrupted, a sudden panic lacing her words. Alice glared at her for a moment.

“Bella, I almost attacked you!”

Bella remembered that too clearly for her liking, and the memory of it sent shivers down her spine. Maybe it was a lack of knowledge as to what Alice attacking her would have entailed, or maybe it was Bella’s usual lack of self-preservation at play, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to care.

Blissful ignorance really is a macabre thing.

“But you didn’t. Y-you ran off, or something.” Bella deflected, much to Alice’s dismay.

“That’s true, but—”

“Alice. Just tell me what you are, what’s going on. We can work through it, I promise. I… I’m not mad at you or anything, for what _almost_ happened, I forgive you,” Bella pleaded.

She hated how desperate she sounded, but she felt as if Alice was pulling away from her and the mere thought of that risked bringing tears to her eyes. Alice looked, if possible, even more tormented by her plea.

“You won’t look at me the same if I do…”

“I will, I promise.”

“You know…” Alice began and fidgeted with the sleeve of the black-and-white two-piece sweater she wore, “I stayed away from you by pure force of will for almost eight years, to keep you safe. From myself and… and others like me. I can do that again, I _need_ to do that again, because you will never be safe around me Bella.”

“But I don’t want you to. I want you in my life, I just got to know you again!”

“You _don’t_ know me Bella, that’s what I’m trying to make you understand.”

“Then tell me!” Bella near-shouted, trying to keep her voice low so not to wake Charlie up.

“You will be afraid of me, I know it,” Alice was adamant about her convictions because she’d seen Bella’s reaction play out in her own head – or rather, part of her possible reaction.

For the longest time, Alice didn’t understand the difference between the types of visions she had:

When her gift was unusually cooperative and showed her something clear-as-day, even if the vision itself usually consisted of a series of short frames and vignettes, it tended to mean that such a future was incoming – that someone had made a decision. But if she forced visions or if they were just fragmented fuzzy images – usually random scenarios cycling through her mind in rapid speed and in a seemingly random order – whatever future she was seeking wasn’t established yet. All it took was a single decision, and the future would change.

Besides, as had happened twice recently, her ability had seemed to stop working – no spontaneous flutters of Bella’s future through her mind. This wouldn’t have been worrisome because of the short time-frame it didn’t work and because of how her gift was prone to randomized outbursts rather than predictability, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d only seen a hazy darkness when she’d tried to force a vision of Bella’s future.

Forcing a vision was draining and demanded a lot of concentration, but she’d done that regularly once or twice a day while she was away from Bella all those years to make sure she was safe, and now not even that worked when she wanted it to.

“The only reason you could leave when I was a kid was because I thought you weren’t even real. If you leave me now, after these past two weeks… I’d never recover from that.”

“Bella…”

“What. We both know it. I’m not gonna be able to just move on and forget you, I… I want you in my life! You mean _so_ much to me.”

“I know,” Alice said, resigned.

She knew leaving Bella – if she even physically and emotionally could make herself do that – would be cruel now. It was everything she wanted, to stay with Bella. To love Bella, cherish her and keep her safe for the rest of her existence – but she cynically thought that not everyone gets what they want.

“So, spill it. I can take whatever horrible information you throw at me,” Bella demanded, crossed her arms and stared the small non-human down.

Alice took a fortifying breath that she didn’t need and resigned herself to whatever fate that her visions refused to give her a clear glimpse of:

“I’m a vampire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, thoughts? :D :D  
> (I promise we'll get into that last part wayyyy more in the next chapter, but I really did have to cut it somewhere and what better place to cut it than at the giant-ass cliffhanger...?) :'D


	6. (To be a) Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty long and there’s a looooot of heavy text to work through. Hopefully it still flows well enough. I’ve probably spent ~~15~~ 25 hours just micro-editing this chapter because it was very unwieldly (and still is to an extent), but I think this is as good as it’s gonna get by my hand.  
> Happy reading!
> 
>  **EDIT June 28th, 2020:** I rewrote a large part of this chapter based on some well thought-out constructive criticism after I originally posted it – and accidentally added like 800 words to it (whoops!).  
> Nothing new happens, per se, but I switched “narrator” (from the omniscient third-person narrator, to Alice) for a lot of the things described in the 2nd scene of the chapter.  
> Because of this I also had to fill out the conversational environment a lot, so that our two main-characters wouldn’t come across as unfeeling robots – hence the many added words.

“I’m sorry?” Bella asked.

She was convinced she must have heard Alice wrong, because she couldn’t possibly have heard her _right_ – what she suggested was completely insane.

“I’m a vampire,” Alice repeated.

“Uh… okay…”

Vampires. The thought was absurd, completely unrealistic, a smart-ass joke, to Bella. Considering the era in which she lived she was much more inclined to believe in something like the X-men than the supernatural. Strange physical traits like pale and cold skin, red eyes, and an uncannily resilient body Bella could chalk up to human mutations or weird genetic mumbo-jumbo. Precognition was a stretch, but she supposed it _could_ be possible.

Then there had been the swishing blurring speed Alice had moved at, the purring and growling and hissing, the animalistic fury Bella had witnessed, the _mate-bond_ she’d talked about… Maybe all those things combined really was too much of a coincidence to be strictly scientifically _humanly_ possible, Bella thought, because _aliens_ walking the Earth were such an insane concept; and aliens who had been around for at least a decade, and _looked_ almost like humans, and _talked_ just like them, and _no one_ had noticed them before…?

She had a thing for classic literature. Particularly the classics of the Romantic era; Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and The Scarlet Letter to name a few of her favorites. Recently – before her mother’s illness got out of hand back in Phoenix – she ventured into the darker side of the Romantics with Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley, but their works hadn’t stuck with her as well as the others. She’d even bought a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that she found at a second-hand store in Phoenix, which she suddenly wished she had taken the time to read.

_Maybe Alice is something truly supernatural..._

“So, what does that mean?” Bella asked, erring on the side of caution in case she was reading way too much into what was going on.

“Surely you must know what a vampire is,” Alice said and looked at her skeptically.

“Yeah, but I mean…are we talking a _euphemism_ for something, like, disturbingly gory, or like actual fangs and blood-drinking?”

“I think the fact that I _am_ a vampire should be disturbing enough,” Alice said dryly, “but in any case, the latter would be the one, yes. Not the fangs, though.”

“Can you prove it to me?” Bella asked, in need of irrefutable proof for what Alice claimed to be.

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?” Alice couldn’t possibly assume that Bella would just take her word for it, could she?

“Because it will frighten you.”

Bella managed to suppress a sigh, just barely.

“You need to stop treating me like I’m a baby or made of wet papier-mâché,” she said, annoyed.

“In comparison to me you might as well be,” Alice pointed out.

They were still standing in the middle of Bella’s room with just a few feet of space between them. The absurdity of the situation suddenly struck Bella; she was standing in her room essentially arguing with her friend about whether she was a _vampire_ or just decidedly superhuman and possibly delusional. If it wasn’t for the fact that Charlie had clearly heard Alice’s literal hissy-fit a week earlier Bella would have backpedaled to her old conclusion that Alice was a figment of her imagination.

“I’m supernaturally strong and fast—”

“How do you expect me to believe you if you won’t show me any evidence?”

“—you must have thought about that; how I’ve just blurred and disappeared?” Alice continued unaffected by Bella’s interruption; she had committed now – she would do what she could to prove to Bella that she was speaking the truth.

“Yeah, well… I mean I did notice last week, I just…”

“My body is cold. I have red eyes. Bella, I _drink blood_ ,” Alice went on, urging Bella to add all of her strange traits together and see Alice for what she was.

“I _know_ , okay, you just said that,” Bella said flatly, and then backpedaled when she realized her tone was bordering on rude, “It’s just, I mean, you’re asking me to believe that you’re this _supernatural_ creature that I’ve been taught since childhood is just part of scary stories. You don’t even have fangs.”

A humorless chuckle escapes Alice, “I don’t, no,” she figured it was best to leave out the part about how she in no way needed those to get ahold of sustenance; she was ridiculously weaponized as it was.

“Okay, so…” Bella huffed and pulled a hand anxiously through her hair.

She didn’t have time to progress further with her interrogation before Alice picked the falling hand up and placed it on the exposed skin on the side of her neck. Bella reflexively tried to jerk her hand away as Alice pulled it towards her, but the latter’s grip might as well have been made of cast iron for how badly she succeeded with prying her hand free.

“A-Alice! What—” she exclaimed and then shuddered as her hand was placed against Alice’s neck, covered by the pixie’s own. Her skin was so cold.

“Do you feel that?” Alice said, completely ignoring Bella’s flustered spluttering and beet-red face.

Bella caught herself briefly analyzing what she was feeling; a solid surface, cold but completely smooth almost to the point of being soft even though it was anything but – and then she blanched at how strange and borderline inappropriate this felt.

“D-do you mean the chill, because then yes,” Bella said trying her hardest to not stammer awkwardly.

“I don’t have a pulse, Bella,” Alice said then, almost oblivious to the fact that Bella had already given her a reply.

“W-what?” the human stammered – surely, she must have heard her wrong.

“You can’t feel a pulse, can you?” Alice repeated and with the help of her other hand moved Bella’s pliant and limp one to instead rest on one of her wrists.

“Uh, Alice,” Bella began, and Alice felt how the human inquisitively pressed her fingers down slightly – trying to find a radial pulse which didn’t exist, “Th-that’s weird…” the human mumbled and a breezy hiccup of laughter escaped her.

“Probably just my fingers being numb, they do that sometimes,” Bella heard her own voice breathe out.

Alice recognized the strangely distant tone that Bella voice had taken on for what it was and let go of her. To her surprise Bella just shook her hand and flexed it a few times and then returned it to Alice’s wrist again, this time with only two fingers bundled together and placed on the base of the slightly visible tendon in Alice’s wrist.

She decided to give Bella some time to analyze and adjust to what she would inevitably find and what Alice would later hopefully get to explain to her; she lacked a pulse because she lacked a beating heart. To her own knowledge the only organs in her torso that still worked were her lungs, and she didn’t even _have_ to use those if she didn’t want to. A few beats of silence passed, and Alice noticed the second Bella’s body tensed up by way of the human’s briefly stuttering heartbeat and suspended breath.

Bella felt as if the room had warped around her – as if every fiber of her being was suddenly fully focused on the tips of her fingers and how the only thing they picked up was the cold, smooth and unyielding flesh of Alice’s wrist, no matter how much pressure she put on them. No pulse. While the rational part of her tried to explain away what she was feeling and almost wanted to lean in and take a thorough look, the rest of her body and mind screamed at her to bolt from the room. She wasn’t entirely sure where that panicky feeling originated from.

She didn’t feel in control of her own body and dimly remembered having read a recollection from an earthquake-survivor of what they experienced going into shock; a feeling of being outside of one’s own body, detached and just observing events around them without any control in the matter.

“Bella…?” Alice asked carefully and moved her free arm to carefully touch the young woman and bring her out of her stupor.

“Um! I don’t—don’t!” Bella practically keened – her voice unusually high-pitched, as she jerked away from Alice’s arm as if it was a hot branding iron, “Go sit. Go sit, over there.”

Alice’s arm fell to her side and her face settled in a grimace; Bella was in shock, rambling and pulling away from her as if she had the plague. In a way she supposed she indeed had an incurable disease associated with a very high mortality rate.

This was what Alice had surmised would happen – the human mind in general isn’t good with the supernatural. In most instances where it’s confronted by it, it will reason it away as a trick of the senses and the human would move on as if nothing had happened – truly none the wiser. But in the instances where rationalizing is impossible due to the nature of the confrontation the human mind is alarmingly likely to break rather than accept the existence of something supernatural.

Bella was young, of sound mind and body, and had a penchant for rational thinking. Alice knew that she still had the possibility to disappear and leave Bella to rationalize everything about her away in due time; if she was meticulous enough, she could again make it appear as if she never existed in the first place. It would be cruel at this point, but it was the most pragmatic solution if Bella proved incapable of processing the reality Alice tried to make her see.

She loved the human and knew that the guilt – as relatively new of a concept as it was to her – of knowingly abandoning her mate like that would eventually destroy her mentally. She’d need someone – another vampire – to finish the job physically as well; perhaps she’d have to rush her visit to Italy by a few decades in search of those powerful vampires residing there. Previous companions had mentioned them to her many, many years ago – they’d apparently kept residence under a small Italian town for millennia.

And so, Alice decided to placate Bella’s erratic twitching by doing as she was told and move over to the bed to sit down.

Bella – in contradiction to Alice’s disturbingly calm inner musings – was going through what she assumed an existential crisis felt like:

_Alice is **a**_ **_vampire_** _… **Alice** is a vampire… _

_Red eyes, cold pale skin, permanently youthful… no pulse…_

It was all slowly sinking into Bella’s mind – like a thick goo seeping through a much too narrow filter it was a slow but sure process. Dexterity impossible to a mere human, animalistic growls and sounds, demonic fury and speed beyond the perception of the human eye; minutes passed in which Bella tried and failed to make logical sense of everything according to the parameters she had grown up adjusting to.

Certain things just weren’t possible, didn’t _exist_ – and that was final. But Bella thought then, that she couldn’t claim complete knowledge of the world – all its secrets and all it had to offer. No one could, and most certainly not a 17-year old who had barely traveled anywhere and never done or witnessed anything even remotely remarkable – until that very moment at least. What could she possibly know about the world in the grand scheme of things?

After several minutes of pondering, Bella realized that she couldn’t just stand there forever. She had kept her eyes trained on Alice sitting on her bed the entire time, and she too seemed to have frozen in place. The still posture reminded Bella of a statue, if not for the bright and alert eyes focused on her, she realized as she came back to herself.

Her legs were getting stiff for standing in such a rigid way for too long, and she contemplated if she should go to sit on the side of the bed next to Alice, the rocking chair in the far corner of the room, or compromise and sit down on her desk-chair in the middle of the two. What did Alice expect her to do – could she possibly even see what Bella decided on just like that?

But if Alice had ever wanted to hurt her, Bella reasoned, wouldn’t she have done so a long time ago? She’d had plenty of opportunities, both back when Bella had been a completely defenseless child with a mother so scatterbrained that she wouldn’t notice her daughter was missing for hours, and after Bella came back to Forks. In fact, Alice had always done the exact opposite; always making sure Bella felt happy and safe when she could, always being kind to her…

Then Bella remembered the connection that Alice had told her about, the mate-connection.

She supposed it was possible that Alice had _wanted_ to hurt her at some point – like she’d said; she drank blood – and that whatever that mate-connection she spoke of had kept that urge under control, Bella wouldn’t know that. But again, it was also possible that the connection didn’t enforce that type of power over Alice and that the vampire’s kind and sympathetic disposition was just in her nature and that Bella would always have been safe with her regardless of the connection or not.

Bella’s reasoning eventually boiled down to exactly that; Alice was bound to her – _mated_ to her, even if that particular phrasing put Bella off – and had seen hundreds of possibilities to hurt her or drink her blood throughout the years, and still hadn’t ever even laid a finger on Bella in a threatening way. With an almost comically noisy swallow Bella steadied herself and slowly walked over to the bed.

_You can do this, Bella, you can do this…_

“Bella…?” Alice questioned again; surprise evident on her entire face – she hadn’t expected Bella to approach her after the fear she’d displayed.

“I’m okay now,” Bella reassured her, and sat down close to the tiny vampire, “I just needed a moment. Several moments,” her voice was still wavering on the precipice of breaking.

Alice didn’t say anything; she was for once in her long existence speechless. She could hear the young human woman next to her suck in what seemed to be a steadying breath, but she was busy staring a hole into the far wall of the room while visions rushed through her mind in a cacophony of rapid images that even her enhanced brain struggled to keep track of. A volatile emotional state made it infinitely harder to concentrate on anything her gift showed her, it stopped working the way she wanted it to. And so, she wasn’t at all prepared for what she felt next:

Bella’s arms slid around her neck, from her left side, and she suddenly invaded her personal space – not that she minded – and desperately clung to the small vampire’s frame like a lifebuoy. She was trembling like a leaf in the wind, and Alice wanted to slide her arms around the human in turn and not let go. But she couldn’t seem to make herself move for the moment, not even as the young human started crying.

“Thi-his doesn’t change anything fo-for me Alice,” Bella sobbed quietly into Alice’s neck, “I mean… no-not anything that matters to me. I want you… in my life, still.”

Alice let out something like a wet laugh, her throat felt clogged with emotion. She’d found as she encountered Bella for the very first time that crying had… eluded her.

She _understood_ crying, as some type of distant concept, but she had realized that the urge to cry had never even struck before her first encounter with the human – her eyes seemed incapable of producing tears. Through her… lifestyle, through decades upon decades of observing humans, there had always been something intriguing about them – especially those displays of human grief piquing her interest. It felt almost as if something within her _stirred_ at seeing them, but like a single weak smoldering cinder that stirring had always quickly flickered out.

Until she met Bella, after which her perfect memory allowed her to look back and see all of these instances and her reactions to them for what they were; she’d understood that she didn’t feel what she eventually decoded were empathy and sympathy – at least not like humans did – not like she herself probably used to in her own human past.

The realization was sudden, but _feeling_ on this new plane? It took time – almost like she imagined rebuilding a previously thought lost limb was like. And now, over a decade after first meeting her human, she had to cope with many more feelings besides the anger, desperation and apathy that had colored most of her existence; young Bella had brought _life_ into her life in a way it took great effort to get used to.

With her relatively newfound ability of feeling these new things – again? – she had, a handful of times between their first meeting and now sitting on almost adult-Bella’s bed having just confessed to being a vampire, felt that same stirring but _so much stronger._ Almost like it was difficult to breathe and swallow – crying, but without the immediate visible anguish, without being able to shed any tears.

“Oh Bella…” Alice choked out, unable to fathom how the young woman could be so _okay_ with everything.

She’d chosen not to venture into much detail, which she knew was wise – those were conversations for other days. She managed to lift her arm and place it at the nape of Bella’s neck, squeezing comfortingly. They sat like that for a while – Bella crying softly and Alice weathering both of their respective emotional assaults while softly and absentmindedly massaging the human’s neck. When Bella was getting heavier against her solid frame, she realized that the revelation and its aftermath had zapped the human of energy.

“Will you… will you stay with me tonight, like last time?” Bella mumbled tiredly, still hiding her face embarrassingly in Alice’s neck, the cool flesh was a balm to her flushed face and puffy, red-rimmed eyes.

“Of course, my _Isabella…_ ”

Bella made a surprised noise in her throat at the sudden unorthodox term of endearment – using her full name! – but she found that she didn’t mind the slightly possessive note in it. Alice got up from the bed and Bella tipped fully to the side on the mattress at the lack of support, her head at the foot end of the bed.

“Is it okay if I touch…” Alice trailed off, uncertain at the phrasing and if she should actively initiate contact with Bella in her current state, “I can help you into bed, if you like?”

“Yes please.”

Without any effort Alice leaned down and snaked one arm under Bella’s legs – at the bends of her knees, and the other across the small of her back. Bella let out a snort at Alice’s display of attempting to lift her heavier and taller body off the bed bridal-style; in the light of everything that had just happened she hadn’t really processed that Alice had told her she was supernaturally strong. She couldn’t stifle a surprised yelp when Alice lifted her clean up off the bed as if her 131 pounds were nothing.

Bella struggled to keep up as she was placed properly on her mattress on the other side of the bed, the covers fluttering through the air above her to settle gingerly over her frame. The lights of her room went out, there was a rush of air as her window was closed and latched, and then Alice was suddenly laying under the covers on her back – all in the span of less than ten seconds.

Bella couldn’t help but move closer to her captivating friend who turned out to be a vampire of all things, flipping onto her side and draping an arm over Alice’s cold stomach.

“Just, you know… _ask_ before you drink my blood or whatever, Alice…” Bella mumbled when Alice had turned to her side too, so that Bella spooned her small frame.

“I would if I ever intended to,” Alice replied tersely.

Bella left the rest of the things she wanted to say for another time and took Alice’s word for it for the moment.

Both still had all their clothes on, which was for the best if Alice was going to lay close to Bella all night and the human wouldn’t start to shiver. With the covers over them there was even the chance that Alice would warm up eventually. She began trailing a soothing pattern on Bella’s forearm with a chilly but soft and gentle finger, and Bella drifted off to sleep not long afterwards.

////

When Bella awoke the following morning, she found that she was laying against something strangely solid. She blinked to focus her sleep-blurred vision and realized she had folded herself along the entire right side of Alice’s body sometime during the night, one arm curled under the vampire and the other slung across her, with one leg twined in Alice’s. Her head was tucked into the space between Alice’s neck and shoulder. Much to her relief she found that she at least hadn’t drooled on her friend – her awkwardly close contact with Alice was mortifying enough.

The human had curled up to Alice around two hours after she had fallen asleep. Alice didn’t sleep herself – she couldn’t due to her vampirism – but she nonetheless found it soothing to stay with Bella during the nights. The need to keep her safe was only a small part of why; seeing and feeling Bella breathe, fidget and whine feebly in her sleep was a much larger part of it.

Even if she’d only spent two nights actually _sharing_ a bed with Bella so far, she’d spent a great many more during the human’s early childhood watching her sleep. But not even all those times – no matter how nice she’d felt guarding over her young human – topped the feeling of Bella curling up against her in the middle of the night.

In all honestly, however, the first hour of that had been a battle of wills. As Bella had tucked her head into Alice’s neck, the vampire had been faced with an almost unimpeded access to her jugular vein.

Bella’s blood rarely tempted her; the many encounters they’d had over the years – most of which Bella wasn’t aware of – had helped practice Alice’s control to great heights. But it wasn’t anywhere close to perfect, and the close vicinity coupled with the human’s warmth and her soft unknowing snoring had tested that control more than Alice was comfortable with.

She’d fed the prior evening, before coming back to Bella prepared to step back from her life again. She’d wanted to be as absolutely certain as she could that she’d stay in control, if the talk they’d had last night had played out differently.

That knowledge – that she wasn’t _actually_ thirsty – had helped Alice to sequentially fight back the animalistic urge simmering within her. The feeling had dissipated after an hour – a fraction of time for someone like her – and the rest of the night had progressed with no further risk of incident. Bella’s warmth and deep calm breaths had eventually lulled the vampire into a state of quasi-sleep that she’d never experienced before, and she found that she enjoyed it.

“Thank God you’re awake, I was beginning to worry I’d never get out of this hostage situation,” Alice teased when she picked up the change in Bella’s breathing pattern.

“Shut up,” Bella mumbled and proceeded to pull away, a glowing red blush consuming her entire face and neck.

Her attempt to distance herself from Alice didn’t work on account of the two strong arms snaked around her to hold her in place.

“Alice?” Bella questioned and Alice’s arms relented for a bit, but she didn’t remove them.

“Sorry,” Alice said sheepishly, “I don’t mind this though. It’s… cozy. And I’m warm thanks to you.”

“Okay…” Bella breathed out and relaxed against Alice’s frame again.

If Alice enjoyed having her invade her space, Bella felt she could appease her for a while. Besides, it would give her time to work on getting her blush under control, because she was sure Alice would tease her if she noticed. In a way she missed the easygoing jargon they’d shared when she was a kid where Alice would relentlessly tease and poke fun at her – all good-naturedly – and then hold her and just spend time with her. Their relationship since the reunion of sorts had been too angsty and serious in comparison – but Bella supposed that was also part of being an adult. Things aren’t always fun or easygoing.

Bella would never have willingly been that close to any of her other friends, though – on account of them being _friends_ and nothing more, but there was something special about Alice. For one she was in a way associated with safety to Bella – which was ironic considering she was a vampire. And secondly, she supposed that the knowledge of the connection between Alice and herself was why she didn’t feel awkward being so touchy-feely with the tiny vampire. She still felt mildly anxious about touching Alice, but that had more to do with that she was a moody and hormonal teenager and close contact with other – very attractive – people could mean something entirely different than just innocent fun these days.

And Alice was right; staying huddled up like they had during the night, with the fluffy cover on top of them to isolate the warmth, had warmed up Alice’s body to the point that she felt like any other body to Bella. No jarring difference in temperature, it was nice. What was even nicer was the rumbling starting up in Alice’s chest. She’d heard it the first time they’d shared a bed, and again it reminded her of the heavy purring of a particularly content wildcat. She associated it with Alice feeling good, and that in turn made the strange sound pleasant to Bella as well.

“Alice?” Bella questioned again.

“Mm-hm?”

“How do you do that, the rumbling I mean?”

“We have additional… vocal capabilities to express feelings and reactions. I suppose, to you, they would simply be noises.”

“Communications with extra _everything_ ,” Bella mumbled and snickered.

“Do you mean like… pizza?” Alice asked hesitantly trying to decipher the joke but having an extremely limited understanding of human customs, and Bella choked up with laughter.

Her complete confusion at Bella’s joke had the latter gasping for breath; humans talked strange, and that wasn’t even going into their _jokes._ She’d overheard humans order the curious dish multiple times and they always had ‘extra _something_ ’ on them.

“Why are you laughing at me?” she then asked with a hint of annoyance.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m not really laughing _at_ you, but by God that was too… endearing,” Bella squeezed her arms around Alice to show that she wasn’t making fun of her, “Anyways, continue.”

Alice grumbled at not having been made any wiser to what Bella’s joke meant but filed it away to ask about later. Might as well get back to the topic at hand.

“These _sounds_. As for how they’re possible… there’s not a lot of knowledge about my kind going around. I’ve met others like me over the years, and some shared what they knew but most weren’t in the chattiest of moods.”

“Not ‘in the chattiest of moods’…? Like, you’re pretty great, why would someone not like you?” Bella asked, failing to understand why someone would greet Alice with hostility.

“It’s…” Alice trailed off, at a loss as how to explain this part of herself – the part that Bella had seen glimpses of but that she didn’t want the human to associate her with, “it’s instinct. We’re very territorial creatures, it really boils down to self-preservation and competition. Of territory… food…”

 _Food_.

Bella’s knowledge of vampires – in her case fictional vampires from books and movies – was limited because it wasn’t a genre she typically went for, but across the board vampirism seemed to have one common factor to her; bloodlust.

If vampires needed blood to survive, they logically experienced some type of hunger for it. Whether that was only a rumbling stomach or a raging insatiable bloodthirst 24 hours a day, Bella didn’t know. It didn’t _seem_ to be the latter, at least.

“’Self-preservation’ how?” Bella asked with a shiver running down her spine; the topic stirred up a morbid curiosity within her. Alice’s arms tightened marginally around her body, as if afraid she’d pull away.

“Like I said, I have very little knowledge apart from the scraps I’ve picked up over the years. We are vicious creatures—" Alice said, but was swiftly interrupted:

“You’re not vicious, Alice.”

“Believe me, I am. You just haven’t seen enough to believe it yet,” Alice chuckled humorlessly.

Bella realized that the topic was distressing for her vampire-friend and wanted to abort the conversation, but Alice shouldered on before she could figure out a way to do so:

“We’re ruled by instincts; the want to dominate and acquire power and status, and some are more ruled by those instincts than others. My foresight has helped me a lot over the years. By scanning my own future, I’ve mostly managed to steer clear of others I didn’t want to… associate with.”

“No one else has this… gift?”

“As far as I’ve understood it; no. Additional abilities are supposedly very rare, few of us have them. Some of the companions I traveled with over the years had them too, but not like me.”

“Like how?” Bella asked, riveted by the secret world and all its nuances that was just unraveling to her.

“I met a girl who had the ability to instantly tell when someone was lying to her. I travelled with her and her coven for a few years, but because of our… nature, the friction between the four of us became too much. We split up amicably enough, before it could devolve into something bad.”

“Coven is like… a family?”

“No. Again, it’s instincts. We band together more often out of necessity than the desire to have company, we strive to secure our own survival or acquisition of power. Most choose to travel alone and drift on the fringes of human society, because it’s easier to not have to deal with others of our kind at all. I occasionally joined a coven for brief periods of time, there was safety in numbers, but we still didn’t play well with each other. We were only four when I travelled with them – the coven with the girl who could spot lies – and I was the outsider. They almost ended up killing me because the tensions stemming from what we are eventually became unbearable.”

A flare of anger sparked in Bella at the thought of someone hurting her friend, her _mate_ – even if she couldn’t feel _that_ particular connection. It made her want to punch that someone in the face, and maybe she would have, if presented with the opportunity and her foe wasn’t a vampire.

Alice had tensed up, the soothing rumbles radiating from somewhere in her thorax having ceased as soon as the two of them had slipped into more serious topics of conversation – she likely hadn’t planned for Bella to pry, to be this straightforward with her questions. And whilst the human woman could tell that the vampire laying half-underneath her was uncomfortable, she couldn’t afford to pay that worry her full attention.

“Are you okay?” she asked, torn between wanting to get on with their conversation, or ensuring that Alice wasn’t too shaken up by it. The latter took a good long while to answer:

“Yes, it’s just that I don’t like to talk about this, about other vampires,” she eventually got out – she wanted to avoid explaining everything that her gift told her was likely unavoidable anyway, “You smell very good…” she sighed regrettably – all this felt so _base_ ; she was almost embarrassed.

A cold shiver ran down Bella’s spine when it hit her that Alice wasn’t talking about her smell as in her body wash or the occasional spray of perfume she sometimes indulged in, but rather, as _food_.

“… And someone could very likely consider me their dinner?” she chanced.

“Yes,” Alice growled, miffed but not surprised by Bella’s quick jab – her mate was very intelligent and observant.

The still-seething irritation Bella felt from earlier at the thought of someone harming Alice was suddenly overshadowed and gobbled up by fear.

Blood was Alice’s species’ food, and her blood appeared to be even more alluring to them than normal… She could only hope that the slight, pixyish vampire beneath her didn’t view her as a meal – that felt like bad news.

“You misunderstood me,” Alice reassured after a minute of Bella’s contemplative silence and stuttering pulse, trying to ease her away from her incoming distress, “I was talking about others of my kind, not myself.”

“I don’t smell good to you?” the human blurted, flip-flopping between relief that maybe Alice wasn’t thirsting after her blood, and offence that she might even smell bad to her friend – she’d had enough of that shit from Leah.

“You do,” Alice began, and Bella solemnly accepted the fact that her life was possibly in danger that very second, “but that has more to do with what you are to me, rather than the… _other_ option.”

“Explain.”

“To me it’s… more? Maybe it’s the connection between us, it carries with it a lot of sentimental value – a much deeper respect for your life and wellbeing. To me, you’re associated with more than simply, _ugh_ … _food_.”

“But others like you…?”

The instinctual, monstrous id of Alice’s personality roared internally at the thought of another like her coming within _smelling_ -distance of Bella. Again. Luckily, she was pre-occupied with cuddling her human; the memories from _that time_ made her want to tear down a house in a fit of rage.

When Renée had first moved Bella and herself to Arizona in early 2011, Phoenix had been territory claimed and divided between two separate coven of vampires – totaling ten individuals. She’d decided relatively early on to stay out of their way, to not accidentally lead any of them to the then almost ten-year-old girl and put her life in danger.

The presence of these two covens had culminated in her decision to only make occasional visits to the human’s bedroom while its inhabitant was asleep or away; only when she’d been absolutely certain that her own foreign scent would have enough time to disperse after she left, ensuring that no other vampire moving nearby would come to investigate. During those undercover visits she’d always wished things to be easier, wished that Bella could get to know the _truth_ about her.

The last official visit she’d paid Bella had taken place one and a half weeks after Renée had moved them into the apartment, having recently been prescribed medication for her mental illness. The young girl had been terrified that her mother was deathly sick, and Alice had been unable to stay away from her – consequences be damned.

“It’s different to them,” Alice reiterated, this time tersely.

As the years had passed, she’d understood that the self-imposed distance she’d put between herself and the girl had been unavoidable; Bella was getting older. She’d always been bright for her age, but even someone of Alice’s circumstances knew that the idealistic reverence with which the child had looked at her would eventually wear off and be replaced by incessant curiosity and questions she would be unable to answer.

Then, a few months after Bella had turned twelve, a lone and likely very young vampire had been passing through Phoenix and caught the pre-teen’s mouthwatering smell – immediately reverting to his inner monster and manically dashing after it, without concern for the covens’ territories and the still strained balance of power in the city.

Alice had killed him; she’d almost been knocked off her feet by a sudden vision of what Bella’s future entailed when her hunter had decided to indulge in what her scent promised – and those were mental images that she’d never be able to scrub from her mind. And so, she’d raced to Bella’s aid and disposed of the threat before the girl had even known she was in danger.

Bella looked wholly unimpressed by Alice’s lackluster explanation, and the vampire sighed; she supposed that this was what she got for thinking she could avoid the unavoidable – she seemed to have gotten out before the incessant questions would have begun as Bella had approached her teens, only to have been shoehorned into answering them now.

“We…distinguish between people primarily through scent; there’s a difference between humans and vampires. Then, underlying individual components and products or materials that someone might favor to wear are all summed up to create person’s unique smell. My kind are excellent trackers because our olfactory sense is so strong – range-wise and register-wise. Some of us are even better at tracking than others and can trace scents from a dozen miles away.”

“But… but wouldn’t that be… I mean, blood smells good to you guys, right?” Bella asked for clarification, her voice wavering slightly. She had to fight the impulse to loosen herself from Alice’s embrace.

“Very. But that’s usually not the first thing we pick up,” Alice began and squirmed a bit – she wished she had been better prepared for this, “That would be too… overwhelming for the majority of us. For most humans, their individual fragrance is what first… attracts us to them – unless they’re wounded. If we want to get a whiff of their blood, we’d have to be close enough to smell the skin over their thickest veins – by which point our hunger is likely already roused.”

Bella’s gut clenched painfully; Alice was close enough to smell her skin now – her nose was pressed to the soft flesh below her jaw, for crying out loud!

“Don’t worry, Bella. I’d never do this if I knew I risked your safety,” Alice mumbled and squeezed the human’s body consolingly, expertly decoding Bella’s sudden tension and stuttering pulse. Naturally, she could never be completely confident about that, but after having so successfully leashed her instincts during the night, she really felt fully in control now.

“Okay…” the human swallowed nervously; she told herself that she had to trust Alice at this point.

 _If she wanted to hurt you, she would have done that a long time ago_.

“I was going to mention that there are exceptions, but I’m not sure that’s wise. I’ve frightened you enough, I think.”

“No, wait, what do you mean ‘exceptions’? I’m already pretty invested in this, Alice, I want you to tell me. I need to know this stuff.”

Alice cynically thought to herself that she’d been naïve thinking Bella would be satisfied with what she’d gotten to know so far.

“Some humans smell extremely good to us, there’s something potent about their blood that tests our control much more severely,” she could practically already hear the follow-up questions bouncing around in the head of the human above her – no decision had been taken on exact phrasing, but she could imagine well enough what Bella wanted to ask.

“D-did, do you mean… W-what _do_ you mean?” Bella then stammered out, the very real fear for her life again nipping at her heels.

Alice was loath to bring up the incident with the hunter in Phoenix, five years ago. She’d tell Bella one day – she didn’t want to keep such secrets from her mate – but right now it seemed more counter-productive than anything else to fess up to how very close Bella had been to death, how only the vampire’s intervention had saved her life.

But she knew that she didn’t have any actual way out from explaining further, right now.

“I mean that some humans smell so good that we lose control of ourselves – no matter where we are, or who’s watching.”

Alice suspected that in addition to Bella’s baseline fragrant aroma, something about her – likely that ‘something’ in her blood – had triggered that primal response in her would-be attacker in 2014.

“Oh,” Bella disentangled herself from Alice’s embrace after some effort – the latter hadn’t wanted her to put distance between them, her reason for not wanting to venture into this topic in the first place.

“Am I… Am I one of those?” Bella hesitated only because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

The young woman rolled off her and laid on her side facing her instead – still under the sheets – and the vampire cynically turned her gaze to the ceiling, cursing herself for her careless previous reply. It had frightened the young human next to her and likely not done Alice’s reputation in her eyes any favors.

She couldn’t be sure if every other vampire were as attracted to Bella’s scent as the human’s would-be murderer had been – or even as she herself was – but he _had_ smelled her from miles away and proceeded to track the trace of her through half of Phoenix, fully intent on savoring the bliss it promised.

The personal fragrance of Bella’s had never been as powerful to Alice as it had obviously been for him – she’d never felt _that_ out-of-control when around the human, but as was typical for her kind she could smell the human’s blood whenever she took a deep breath in her close vicinity – claiming otherwise would make her a liar.

“Not to me,” Alice replied monotonously; guarded from the still-likely backlash her partially lacking, uncomfortable information could spark – Bella knew that she wasn’t telling her everything, “Like I said, you smell very good, but unless I’m this close it’s not your blood that I smell. It’s just… _you_. My… well, my mate.”

Granted, as Bella had grown older – entered her teens – her scent had been even further amplified a few days a month. But nothing about Bella’s blood – not what it smelled like, nor the sound of her heartbeat pumping it through her veins – had any bearing on what her true smell was to Alice, not even the handful of times where she’d been close enough to the human during those particularly fragrant days.

In the beginning – when it had dawned on her what was going on – she’d made a habit of staying even further away, not visiting Bella’s bedroom at night and trying not to breathe in her aromatic appeal if she was close enough to do so.

But when she realized that what caused those especially fragrant days didn’t smell like normal human blood regardless she managed just fine; it certainly teased of the fresh blood running through the human’s veins, but it also smelled… mustier, staler, diluted with something else that wasn’t appetizing at all.

“So, you want to eat me, but you won’t because you have a crush on me?”

In the back of her mind Bella knew that was a low blow, trivializing Alice’s feelings and the connection between them – even if she couldn’t feel it, she was strangely aware of _something_ being – but she couldn’t help the snark. She’d pictured Forks being a calm and boring town where she would get the opportunity to finish school and take control of her life again, and instead Alice had re-entered her life and practically turned it upside-down.

“That wasn’t what I said,” Alice said, annoyed and hurt at Bella’s intentional lack of understanding – if the human couldn’t reciprocate the connection between them, fine, but she didn’t have to be mean about it.

Bella took a few moments to collect herself, ashamed at her childish remark. She liked Alice a lot, she wanted to have her in her life – the thought of her leaving again filled Bella with a heretofore never experienced sense of despair. But there was also _so much_ about her – what she was and what their connection meant – that stressed the young woman out immensely.

“Sorry,” Bella mumbled after a while, “I didn’t mean to be an ass about it. It’s just… a lot.”

“I’ve never been in the position you’re in, so I can’t say that I understand. But I try to.”

“So, you’ll be here to save me from your literally bloodthirsty kin when I need it?” Bella tried to joke, but in the light of the recent revelation it fell flat.

“I will,” Alice vowed, “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~The editing of this one really frustrated me. Any thoughts to if/how I could have written part of it better, or streamlined something more? Was it as much of a chore to read as I felt myself?~~
> 
> **EDIT June 28th, 2020:** At this point, I hope the changes I made were noticeable. I did end up liking this new version better – so thank you to the ones who inspired me to improve it!


	7. Back to school, back to reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, I’m really happy because since the last chapter this work surpassed 1000 views (and now almost 1200!).  
> I absolutely didn’t expect that to happen on account of how comparatively small this part of the fandom is, so thanks to everyone that has so far read this (and an even bigger thanks to everyone that has given it kudos and interacted with me in the comments – you guys give me life!).

“Okay, so I just press this button here to unlock the thing, and then the green… phone symbol?”

Bella had dug up her spare phone, a slightly older model than her current smartphone, figuring it would be handy if Alice could call her or vice versa if any of them were gone for longer periods of time. And it would also allow the vampire access to some entertainment in the form of YouTube to occupy herself with when she hung around while the human was studying – after the latter had shown her how to use it, of course.

Alice hadn’t really ventured into the topic, but Bella had deduced that she likely had a very a poor understanding of 21st century technology in comparison to most people, if her previously referenced isolation from human society was anything to go by. Add to that the fact that she’d never seen her sleep – not even during the day, like she assumed a vampire would being a creature of the night and all that; she was somehow always awake both when Bella fell asleep _and_ when she woke up. That led her to believe that her lithe friend didn’t sleep much – or _at all_ – which likely meant that she had a lot of time to kill.

“Yes. My contact information will be saved there, so just tap my icon and it will call me.”

There had been some trouble with getting the touch-screen to properly recognize Alice’s fingers; her smooth and hard and strangely dry skin – Bella had never seen so much as a single bead of sweat on her – probably just registered as an inanimate object when she tried to type. Alice first exhaling a breath on her fingers before typing proved to be an okay workaround.

But the sharp clacking as her fingers made impact with the screen made Bella wince every single time – itching to point out to Alice that she needed to be more careful; she’d grown up always cherishing and caring for her own gadgets. It would likely be wise to invest in a solid glass screen case for the phone, lest it didn’t survive for long.

“If I charge money into it?” Alice asked, looking over the device again.

“It’s pre-paid. Uh, virtual money?” At the look of confusion on Alice’s face, she hurried on, “Never mind. I pay for it every month, automatically, like ten bucks. Point is, you get like 75 minutes of call time, 100 texts and a bit of data on the first each month. You’ll be signed into our Wi-fi most of the time anyways, so the data won’t drain. But just in case.”

“I understood less than half of that, but thank you Bella,” Alice said and gently placed her cheek on Bella’s shoulder. The brunette smiled to herself and tried not to get flustered at Alice’s obvious appreciation and close contact, but ultimately failed.

“It’s nothing, really.”

“You were going to show me something else, too?”

Bella furrowed her brow in consideration, wondering if she should chance to ask the question that had been bubbling within her for the past week.

“U-uh, yeah. I-I just gotta ask, though, ‘cause I’ve been thinking… Um, where are you from Alice?”

The vampire tensed up at the question, and Bella regretted asking so abruptly and going so clearly off-road with the conversation. She’d really only planned to show Alice the phone and how to access the internet on it when they got started with their little project – to leave the question for another time – but she’d gotten hung up again on her inability to place Alice’s accent.

“I just mean, you have… sort of a dialect, or accent, I think? It’s not super-noticeable but sometimes I think about it and try to place it—” she rambled nervously when Alice remained silent; she’d only noticed it now in adulthood.

Alice lifted her head up from Bella’s shoulder and the human immediately missed the affectionate closeness, cursing her lack of tact.

_Ugh, why do you have to be so awkward…?_

“Mississippi.”

Bella’s eyes flew open in momentary surprise.

“Cool, I didn’t expect that. That’s pretty far, like 3000 miles away,” she continued to ramble.

“I haven’t been back there in a long time,” Alice said quietly.

“Oh.”

The melancholy now radiating off Alice was unpleasant to weather, and Bella wished she could either rewind time or just not be such a dork all the time.

“Before I met you, and during the years we were apart, I didn’t… speak much. Kept to myself, so I suppose that’s why the accent is still there. I don’t really notice it though.”

Alice didn’t venture on and Bella was at a sudden loss on what to say – the silence stretched between them. She couldn’t help but feel mildly anxious and wondered if she should ask if Alice didn’t like to talk about herself. That way she could avoid other embarrassing situations in the future.

_Maybe she’ll get more comfortable around me later?_

It was pure curiosity on her end – Bella knew so little about her! But it was also evident that the question had made her friend uncomfortable, even if just for a moment. So, she decided to take it slow on future questions, let it come naturally as their relationship deepened.

“I don’t mind you asking questions about me.”

“I mean, it’s pretty. Your voice,” Bella blurted. Impulsive to say it out loud, but she wanted to reassure Alice.

School was a breeding ground for it; kids and people her age tended to make fun of southern dialects – easy humor points in imitating the stereotypical southern redneck. To make fun of their intolerance, as opposed to the _civilized_ northern folk. Bella just found it crude, and she didn’t want to reinforce any insecurities Alice might have had.

Speaking of school; she’d be back there in less than 36 hours. Part of her was relieved, she’d missed her odd gang of friends – having nothing to occupy herself with except hanging out with Alice, since her human friends had their own plans, was making her extremely restless.

The vampire just smiled at Bella’s awkwardness and leaned back against her frame – the new silence in the room ultimately going from being stressful to quaint and relaxing.

////

“GUYS!” Eric hollered and jumped up and down excitedly when Bella descended on their little group, “I’ve missed you B!”

“For Christ’s sake, Eric…” Jessica muttered next to him, startled by his loud voice. She was nursing a thermo cup filled with coffee, looking more tired and grumpy than Bella had ever seen her – first day of school after a break was rough on most.

It was for Bella as well; she had woken up around 5 AM because she’d needed to pee, and Alice had kept her awake after that – further proving her vampire friend’s strange or nonexistent relationship to the concept of sleep.

She’d fallen asleep relatively early the night before – on Alice’s instance – but after her early morning toilet-break Alice seemed to have decided that she’d slept enough. Charlie had left for work shortly after, and the vampire had then gone into full-on parenting-mode – which was extremely ironic – about how Bella had to get ready and get all her books and equipment in order.

The human had grouchily remarked that she wasn’t exactly about to climb Mount Everest and how she suspected that her friend was being purposefully insufferable – which had proved to be a huge mistake. Alice had clearly taken it as a challenge – probably just to be an ass – and any remaining possibility of having a calm and quiet morning had flown out the window.

Eventually, after a light breakfast and a cup of coffee, Bella had succumbed to the vampire’s antics and decided that she could be an ass as well. She turned on the 10-hour compilation of the Nyan Cat-theme on the soundbar Charlie had gotten her for Christmas – cranked up to the highest volume. 13 minutes in, Alice had made a show of escaping the horrible sound and Bella had taken the opportunity to run out to her truck.

“Guys!” Eric shouted excitedly again when his friends didn’t grant him the attention he wanted.

Bella couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the dirty look Jessica shot him. Gosh, she’d missed her little gang of mismatched nerds. She decided to give Eric the attention he was craving, or he’d just keep on yelling. Mike was showing Angela some cool photos he’d taken in the Olympic National Park during his hike and wasn’t paying the rest of them any attention.

“What is it, Eric?”

“Sooooo,” he began and took a deep breath, no doubt preparing to launch into an intricate story of some kind, “I was gaming with this guy in freshman-year over the break and his father owns this construction company that’s been hella busy the past months—”

“Aaaand...?” Jessica prodded irritably, only partly roused by the possibility of some interesting gossip. Bella just shook her head and laughed.

“I know you guys know, I don’t know if Bella knows, but you know,” Eric babbled, and Bella lost track of all the ‘knows’ in his sentence, “the house that someone began building like way away in the forest north of Forks a few months ago? His father’s company was the one working on it, and they’re _done_.”

“Eric, I fail to see the relevance of, like, _anything_ of what you just said,” Angela said, confused.

“This like _obscenely_ wealthy couple had it custom built from scratch! Is what I’m trying to say. They’ve just moved in, they’re like from Canada or something, and _get this_ : they have two kids who will be enrolling here today. They’ll probably arrive like any minute now.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Mike whistled.

“Is that a big deal?” Bella asked.

“Uh, _duh_. Like no one voluntarily moves to Forks, like ever. Except you recently and Jessica back in like third grade,” Eric teased. Jessica just gave him a threatening side-eye and continued to survey the parking lot for any new faces.

Next followed a few more minutes of friendly bickering between the members of their gang, all of them tired but happy to see each other again. Before they could move inside in time for the bell ringing a bright pearly gray Volvo SUV pulled onto the parking lot, swerving expertly through the lanes and into a pocket between two other cars. Judging by the suddenly excited chatter of the other students, and the excited holler from Eric, the car was a new element to the daily routine of hanging around on the parking lot before the start of the day.

“That have _got_ to be them!” Eric hushed excitedly.

Bella and Angela saw Eric suck in a breath, puffing out slightly and straightening his posture, no doubt about to give the two new kids his signature welcoming-treatment. The same one he’d dumped on the former almost a month earlier - that hadn’t exactly been appreciated, should be added. Before either of the young women could stop him, he was off towards the car.

“I told him not to do that if there was a next time,” Angela lamented.

Then the two new kids climbed out of their fancy SUV, and it was as if someone pressed the collective pause-button on the entire student body currently still outside. Everyone literally stopped what they were doing to look at them, including Bella’s gang, and Eric – who comically froze mid-stride on the way over to the parked car.

A tall muscular guy stepped out of the passenger’s seat slinging a large khaki-colored canvas bag across his back. He was well over six feet tall, probably closer to six and a half, and his dark hair was shiny and cut short.

His height and near-absurdly muscular frame practically made the SUV he stood next to appear small in comparison – Bella distantly wondered how he even fit in the car in the first place. The slimmed cream-white cotton shirt he wore sat like a second skin across his torso – accentuating his pale and ridiculously well-built form.

In short, he looked like he had escaped the frontpage of a fitness magazine. And speaking of escaping from magazine-frontpages…

The woman who got out of the driver’s seat was by far the most beautiful woman Bella had ever seen, in real life and otherwise. Her hair was a lustrous golden blonde mane that cascaded wildly down her back, as if prepared by the most prestigious of hairdressers that same morning.

_Jesus Christ…_

Because she was closer and turned in Bella’s direction, she could make out the supermodel-level facial features on the new woman; her bright blonde hair was set off by dark full brows and strangely bright honey-colored eyes. Distinct, well-carved cheekbones, and pale lips set in a confident smile with a mole to the right of her upper lip cemented her pale timeless beauty.

The burly fitness-man went around the car to the woman and threw a large arm around her shoulder. The woman snaked a much slimmer arm around his waist, and they proceeded to stride gracefully and confidently towards the front doors of the school – completely ignoring Eric standing awkwardly between them and the doors.

As they came closer to Bella and her gang and eventually passed them on their way inside, her eyes practically magnetized to the two newcomers’ faces – airbrushed to perfection. She’d already noticed their pallor, but their eyes were the same bright shade of honey, and where the woman displayed a confident smile on her face, the man wore a shit-eating grin on his – the dimples in his cheeks giving him an almost gleefully childish expression.

When they passed through the doors and disappeared inside the school life among the students on the parking lot resumed.

“What the _fuck_ just happened?” Jessica questioned next to Bella.

The parking lot was buzzing with observations about the newcomers, and Jessica and Mike launched into a discussion about why the new man and woman had acted and held each other as if they were a couple. Eric turned towards the gang again, simultaneously looking shell-shocked and like a sad puppy. Angela waved him over to them again.

“What are two supermodels doing in Forks?” he questioned as he came up to them again, utterly confused.

Bella mirrored his confusion, but she did a better job than him – or most of the other students – of keeping it on the inside. The first bell rang shortly afterwards, and any and all discussions about the newcomers would have to wait until lunch break in the cafeteria when the whole gang would be together again.

////

“So, like did you _see_ what they look like?” Jessica whispered conspiratorially to her gang of friends as they all took their seats at their usual table in the cafeteria.

“We have eyes Jess,” Angela said dryly. She and Jess had many of their classes in-common and she’d heard Jessica’s near-obsessive gossiping about the new students almost all day so far.

Bella snickered at Angela’s unusually snarky reply.

“I just don’t get it!” Jessica complained, “What are people that good-looking even doing in this dump?” Before the new students’ arrival she’d been widely considered as one of the prettiest people at Forks High – attention and validation she enjoyed very much – but now, a piece of her felt as if the new kids had swooped in and stolen her thunder, with their godly good looks.

“I don’t think people choose the place they’re going to live by the local beauty-standard Jess,” Bella snorted – Jessica had many charming qualities, but her tendency for shallowness wasn’t one of them, “Be right back, just gonna buy a soda.”

Bella got up from her seat, aiming to beat the large rush of students coming for the cafeteria so she wouldn’t have to stand in line for ages. She’d only taken a dozen steps towards the counter with the refreshments, focused on replying to a text Leah had sent her during her latest class – about their after-school plans later that afternoon. Her phone was running out of juice, she’d forgotten to charge it during the night. And then she bumped into something.

Mortified that she might have accidentally smacked into a wall – spaced out and klutzy like she was – she blushed bright red and hurriedly tried to act cool about it… Until she looked up and was practically nailed to the spot by the bright honey-colored eyes of the newly enrolled young man.

In her peripheral vision she could make out the new female as well – she hadn’t heard either of their names yet – standing diagonally behind the mountain of muscle masquerading as a junior-year student whom she’d just smacked into. Her expression was surprised for a moment – likely at witnessing someone being this klutzy in real life – before it was replaced by a severe scowl. A shudder ran through Bella from the scowl directed at her and she found that she suddenly wanted to bolt from the room, to the astonished looks and laughter of the other students.

She could have walked face first into a brick wall, for how the collision had felt, and she was still reeling from it.

“Careful,” he smiled easily and placed a hand on the upper arm of Bella’s wobbling frame.

Her eyes shot open at the new guy’s hand touching her, but she managed to keep a lid on – at least – the outwardly visible, strange reactions she had to the two of them, and took a large step back. Mumbling an apology to the man without looking at him she made a beeline back to her friends.

“Where’s your soda?” Mike asked as Bella practically threw herself across their table in her desperation to hide in her seat. She needed some reprieve from both the two new scary students still observing her, and the rest of the people in the cafeteria whom she felt were staring.

He had been too busy debating with Eric which gaming-console was the best one right now – an argument they’d had dozens of times over the years and never agreed about – to notice Bella’s floundering in the middle of the cafeteria.

“Too long line,” she mumbled in reply, much to Mike’s disagreement that there were only four people in line.

She was trying to mask her distress at the realization of how cold the man’s hand had been. Too cold. He’d put his large hand on her upper arm, half of it on the fabric of her t-shirt and the other half on her bare skin, and the familiar chill seeping into her had been immediately disturbing.

Add to the guy’s chilly skin both of the siblings’ pallor; their strange – but admittedly, not red – eyes; the fact that the guy was practically made of stone… Bella had a distinct feeling that she’d just, literally, bumped into someone not entirely human. To anyone not knowing what she knew – thanks to Alice – his cold skin would have just seemed like a case of bad circulation, but something within Bella just _knew_.

 _Christ_ , she wondered to herself, _why am I suddenly surrounded by all this crazy shit?_

“So, I had P.E. with the guy just now before lunch. His name’s Emmett Cullen. Lemme tell you, he _dominated_ that basketball game. I’m totally gonna cheese it to end up on his team next time,” Mike chatted away.

Bella’s other friends followed his lead, chatting and gossiping about everything they had picked up so far about the new students. Angela had shared her French class with the girl who’d briefly introduced herself to the teacher as Rosalie Hale but had – according to Angela – been ‘an ice-queen the rest of class’, completely disinterested in her classmates and barely participating.

Her friends droning on and on helped Bella deal with her newfound knowledge and what it could mean. What she and Alice had discussed a little over a week ago, about her exceptional scent and the effect it could have on other creatures of Alice’s kind, had put some _insecurities_ in her head that she’d never had to deal with before.

The siblings looked a lot like Alice – except for the eyes – and it struck Bella as strange that Alice hadn’t mentioned if vampires could have other eye-colors apart from red; she’d need to ask later.

Glancing over at the two newcomers’ table, she was filled with a sense of anxious dread similar to when she’d been forced to accept what Alice was; on one hand wanting to inspect them closer but on the other hand wanting to run screaming down the hallway, because the risk was very real that she was observing something truly terrifying – wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Eventually she managed to calm herself down with rationalizing that even if they were vampires out to get her, they wouldn’t be able to just grab her in the middle of school; so long as she stayed among people, she’d be safe.

Trigonometry and Physics were the only two classes she had left for the day, and after those she was supposed to meet up with Leah at the diner in town for a meal and a talk – as they had agreed upon earlier.

She would have to consider her own safety if she went ahead with those plans; if the new students were vampires – or maybe something else? – with malicious intent, she reasoned that she’d be in more danger driving home through the much more sparsely inhabited part of outer Forks than she’d be driving half a mile through the town center.

Leah was irritatingly difficult to get ahold of, which made Bella reluctant to cancel – she had questions surrounding the older woman that she aimed to find answers to this afternoon.

 _Alice needs to know what’s going on_ , she thought to herself as she hurriedly pulled up her phone and began typing out a message.

_Probably shouldn’t worry her, but—Fuck!_

Her half-written text flickered over to the logo of her phone’s manufacturer on a black background, before it died.

_Shit! Just figures that basically everything that could go wrong today **has** gone wrong._

Regrettably, none of her friends had brought a spare charger that fit her phone it turned out when she asked them, just barely able to keep her rising panic from her voice – much to Angela’s worried gaze – and she solemnly realized that she would have to wait with updating Alice until she got home.

////

As Bella walked out onto the parking lot after the last bell rang, she was surprised to see the two new students’ car still there. She had intentionally been slow to get out of class and collect her stuff, hoping that the two siblings – or whatever they were – would have left by the time she got outside. That didn’t appear to be the case.

The lot was largely empty, most students hadn’t been in a hurry to dawdle at school the first day of the new year. Bella looked for Emmett and Rosalie but didn’t see them and deemed it safe to get over to her truck.

Her frantic search for a charger – she’d asked a few other people in her next class after lunch; her reluctance to speak to near-strangers overridden by the gravity of the situation – had ended up on the backburner when Rosalie Hale had waltzed into her Trigonometry class and she’d damn near gotten a heart-attack. During the 75-minute lecture she’d managed to exaggerate her own paranoia to the point that she had barely made her way out of the classroom before her last class of the day began.

And, as if the universe hadn’t put her through enough suffering, it turned out that not only did she share Trig with Rosalie, but Physics as well. She’d been so close to do a 180-degree turn in the doorway, if not for how hard it would have been to explain in a believable way why she’d skipped class to her father when he would have inevitably been notified. The blonde had met her clear hesitation of entering the classroom with a scowl from the far corner of the room.

Then Eric had hooked his arm with hers and dragged her through the door and to their seats – allowing the grumbling students behind Bella to also enter the classroom – while joking that ‘her new theory on inertia didn’t seem to be gaining any momentum’. She’d been unable to keep her groan to herself, but the lame joke had only been a temporary balm for her worries.

She knew that she had inherited her anxious nature from Charlie and should be used to it by now, but even so it had struck her that it was a miracle she made it through her final class without fainting.

Now, just as she was about to jump into her truck and screech its tires the hell out there, she spotted something in her peripheral vision: about a stone’s throw away from where she was parked, stood Rosalie with her back to Bella, at the edge of the parking lot.

She was seemingly staring out at nothing, until Emmett came walking to her at a brisk pace from around the corner of the close-by building. He put a hand on her shoulder and appeared to be saying something to her, but Bella was much too far away to hear what. Suddenly Rosalie spun around too fast for her to react and locked her eyes onto the young woman like homing missiles.

“Shit!” Bella hissed and ducked down into the cabin of her truck, reflexively trying to hide the fact that she had been watching the pair.

She laid very still for a long while, not wanting to look up and risk Rosalie’s piercing eyes stabbing into her again – braving the lever of the gearbox pressing uncomfortably into her stomach. When she eventually did crawl up to check, she found that the two students and their car was gone. Bella shakily climbed correctly into the seat, muttering about why she seemed unable to have a calm moment in her life.

The day had been a train-wreck from the beginning, ever since the two new siblings had stepped out of their car that same morning. She felt out of shape and nauseous from the more or less consistent surge of adrenaline into her system from the incident in the cafeteria until now, barely managing to get the car into gear.

She’d try to make her meeting with Leah – which she was running seriously late for – reasonably quick, so that she could get back to the safety of her room and Alice’s presence as soon as possible.

////

A chime alerted the waitress at the counter that a new customer had arrived as Bella opened the door of the diner. The inside was calm – much calmer than she felt. It was just past 4 PM, but most people wouldn’t get off work for at least another 25 minutes, so the diner only had a handful of patrons.

She greeted the waitress and looked around. The teens occupying the table in the far corner from her were familiar, both were in her AP English class, but she couldn’t remember their names. Two old geezers sat at the counter sipping coffee. Then there was the lone person sitting at another booth with their back to her. She recognized the jacket and shoulder-length black hair; Leah. She hurried over, an apology to why she was almost 40 minutes late and hadn’t been able to contact Leah.

“Hey, B. You okay?” The tall older woman greeted, a hint of annoyance in her voice, as Bella came into her vision and sat down, clearly winded.

“Hi,” Bella replied and tried to get her breathing under control, smoothing back a flimsy strand of hair from her face, “Yeah, I’m good. My phone died earlier today, and I got held up at school by a, uh…friend.”

“Uh-huh,” Leah said coolly at the lame excuse – clearly not entirely true, “I was almost about to leave, actually,” she didn’t feel like it was her place to point out that Bella wasn’t being honest, it just sucked that could usually tell when people lied to her – by the nervous energy radiating off of them, for one.

“I’m really sorry Leah! First day back was a total… mess. Didn’t mean to make it seem like I was blowing you off.”

“It’s cool, you’re here now,” Leah said, and her annoyed expression was replaced by a hesitant smile, “let’s get some grub, I’m starving!”

“Oh, you didn’t order yet?”

“Nah, I figured I’d wait for you. But the waitress started glaring at me just before you stepped in, though.”

“Like a knight in shining armor I’ve come to thy rescue,” Bella mumbled melodramatically and got a laugh out of Leah – or more like a bark, when she thought about it.

“You mean: ‘like a toothpick in flimsy flannel and ripped jeans I have stumbled to thy rescue’, but okay,” Leah teased.

“Hey! You can’t judge me by your standards, especially not considering you look like an MMA-fighter these days. Like, literally.”

“What can I say…? Can’t help this hot bod’,” the older woman exaggerated triumphantly, to get a rise out of Bella. Judging by the blush that rose up on her cheeks she was successful – gosh, she was too easy to tease.

“Shut up, that’s not what I meant,” Bella proceeded to ignore Leah and pointedly picked up her menu to give it a thorough examination – she already knew what she was getting, but she didn’t want to show Leah her blush.

“Sure, sure.”

It appeared that the older girl was just as insufferable as she remembered from when they were kids, beneath the rough and unfriendly façade she’d first showed. Speaking of which; she aimed to get some _actual_ answers as to why Leah had acted so weird since Bella came back to Forks – she was convinced that the other woman wasn’t everything she appeared to be.

Peeking over the edge of the menu she held in front of her face, she studied Leah. Her menu was on the table and she was gazing down on it, chin resting on the palm of her hand. Bella didn’t fail to notice the way her nose twitched a few times, a displeased frown spreading on her face, likely as a result of something she smelled. She quickly raised her menu up and darted her eyes away as Leah glanced up from her menu.

“I know I’m hot, but can you please hold off on your ogling until after dinner at least?” Leah smirked.

Bella let out a strangled noise at her friend’s bold and infuriating statement, but quickly recovered from it. She knew Leah was using that razor-sharp wit to take attention away from how she’d clearly noticed the older woman sniffing the air – again – clearly picking up the smell of something unsavory.

She realized she was at a crossroads; she could either continue to ignore Leah’s weirdness and just quietly add everything to the list of strange things about her, or she could confront her about it. The question was if it was time for the latter option just yet.

“So, what was the ‘drama on the Rez’ that you were talking about earlier?” Bella optioned to ask – trying to discreetly dig for more information – while laying down her menu on the table and motioning for the waitress to come take their order.

She was smart enough to realize that ‘drama on the Rez’ was code for something that Leah didn’t want to tell her. She wasn’t inconsiderate enough to pester Leah about it, but she did hope for a slip-up from the older woman that might give her something to go on.

“Nothing much, just Seth messing up in school,” Leah said.

Bella didn’t miss the way Leah’s gaze folded away from her own. She didn’t need superhuman or supernatural senses or abilities to know that she was lying through her teeth; Seth doing badly in school didn’t seem like an issue that would require several days’ worth of attention from her when they had two very loving and caring parents. There was something else going on.

“Uh-huh,” Bella mimicked the other woman’s earlier I-know-you’re-lying-and-I’m-calling-you-out-on-it sound. Unnervingly sharp, dark irises darted back to hers, before Leah took a breath and her stormy expression settled.

The waitress came to take their orders; Bella settled for the daily variety of pie – butternut squash and goat cheese – and a bottle of water, and Leah ordered a simple ham sub sandwich and a large coffee.

“I’d tell you the details if I could, B. Just… don’t worry about it, my parents and I are handling it,” Leah eventually said after the waitress had left them alone again.

She heard the words, but Leah might as well have shouted ‘I’m hiding something possibly supernatural or otherwise weird over at the Reservation!’ for all Bella gleaned from them.

“Sure. It’s, uh, it’s nothing about you right?” she questioned worriedly, almost wholly certain that it in fact _was_ something about Leah herself that she was trying to hide, “Like, nothing _bad_ has happened?”

Part of Bella felt guilty trying to rope Leah into revealing something she clearly didn’t want to, but another part of her countered that guilt with an obstinate ‘so sue me for trying to figure out what the hell is going on around me!’.

“Nah, it’s nothing bad like that. No one’s sick or anything. Just some…stuff,” Leah dodged and fired off a flirty grin, “if I’d known you care this much about me, I wouldn’t have been so frosty with you, B.”

“In your dreams, Lee.”

“Who says it isn’t already?” Leah countered and bounced her eyebrows comically for effect.

“God! You’re insufferable!” Bella bemoaned, but quieted down when the waitress arrived with their food and drinks. Leah just laughed heartily at her genuine mortification from the incessant teasing.

She might have been carefree, as a person, with a sharp wit and no reservations about casual flirting – but that was all it was, at least for the time being; platonic compliments with a flirty twist. She wasn’t currently on the lookout for any type of romantic connections, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge in some harmless flirting to make both of them feel better. And besides, teasing her younger friend until she was red-faced and aghast was pretty funny when she had nothing else to do.

“So, how are things? People at school treating you okay?” Leah asked and bit down into her sandwich.

“Things are good, but Forks is worlds away from Phoenix that’s for sure. I’ve found a cool crew to hang with though, so that’s nice.”

Bella dreaded that Leah would repeat the inquisition she’d put her through the first time they’d met, after she’d gotten wind of her new friends in Forks during the Christmas-party, but she thankfully didn’t. She crossed her fingers and hoped that Leah had learned from her mistake.

“Yeah, you mentioned. That’s cool.”

“Yeah, and I’m not even the new kid anymore! Or like, the new _est_ at least.”

“Oh?” the tall woman hummed, something – that Bella couldn’t quite put her finger on – underwhelming in her expression. She’d expected Leah to react with pleasant surprise considering the pity-party she’d thrown in their text chat during Christmas break about being the new kid, a few days after the Quileute Native had come by to apologize for her behavior on Christmas Eve.

Leah’s actual response was one of badly masked disinterest, more appropriate for a scenario in which Bella had already told her about the new kids ten times over. She failed to see how Leah could have any prior knowledge to what she was about to say – it wasn’t like the everyday news of the teenage population of Forks usually spread to the Reservation – but she figured she could have mistaken the bland reaction for something else.

“Uh… yeah. Two new kids moved to Forks over the winter break, today was their first day,” she continued. Leah’s silence and apparent boredom then spurred her into a case of involuntary word vomit:

“Bunch of rumors about them, but honestly I don’t think they’re actually siblings. Like they were all lovey-dovey and it was sort of weird,” Leah looked up at Bella – her eyes intently boring into the younger woman’s, “and I sort of bumped into them too. They weren’t very nice.”

She might as well have blown an airhorn for how her mention of the two new students being unfriendly to her made Leah react. The older woman stiffened noticeably and jerked away from the table – she suddenly looked much older than the measly year she had on Bella’s age, the angry frown now adorning her features making her look dangerous.

“What did they do?” Leah demanded, the sudden sharpness in her voice setting the younger woman on edge. She was acting up, despite Bella’s crossed fingers and silent plea when everything had seemed to go so well.

_Of course, she had to mess up the mood again, just like on Christmas Eve._

“Uh, I mean… the guy was pretty chill, just uh, sort of weird. But the girl was outright rude. Glared at me, like, the entire day. Like she wanted to—" Bella rambled, but cut herself off when she remembered where and in who’s company she was – she wasn’t at home with Alice yet.

She couldn’t help but ramble, though – something about Leah’s expression made every fiber of Bella’s body want to de-escalate the situation by nervously stuttering out some context to explain herself and her misstep.

The diner was rapidly filling up with people, so she couldn’t discuss the details of how Rosalie had hissed at her and looked ready to rip her head off, or how cold and stone-like the guy had been with Leah even if she had wanted to. So far, that knowledge was reserved for Alice only.

“Wanted to _what_?” Leah emphasized; her dark eyes stormy and near-black – and Bella realized that her supposed friend’s lividity wasn’t entirely directed at _her_.

“Bitch out on me,” Bella squeaked, “Uh, like she hated me from the moment she saw me.”

She prayed that the exasperated woman would buy the lie and the suddenly volatile situation would calm down. Sure, she’d always had an anti-authority streak in her from when they were kids, but Bella couldn’t remember her having these anger issues – she was literally _shaking_ in her seat.

“I gotta go,” Leah gritted out and before Bella could react, she had flown up from her seat.

“What? Leah!” Bella tried to get her friend’s attention, but she quickly made her way out of the diner – bumping into half a dozen people as she did and sending one young man stumbling to the floor just by the door.

Leah took off in a sprint through the window their table was next to, and even if part of Bella wanted to chase after the older woman she decided not to. For one, Leah seemed messed up and she was honestly a little scared of her, and she’d probably do best to just cool off by herself – she’d text her later, when she’d come home and had plugged in her phone.

“Thanks for leaving me with the tab…” she mumbled angrily to no one in particular, before she got up.

She hurried over to the register and the irritated crowd of people mumbling amongst themselves about the rude woman who had charged through them in her way out of the building. The guy Leah had sent tumbling to the floor had gotten up and was dusting off his jacket.

Bella apologized to him on behalf of her friend, but he was hospitable enough and waved her off with an uneasy smile. With a sigh she pulled up the last 15 dollars in cash from her wallet and gave it to the waitress at the counter. She didn’t want to stay at the diner a moment longer than she had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun-dun-duuuun >:D


	8. What's the tally?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, to everyone’s who’s read this story so far. Never imagined that it’d be this appreciated! <3 I hope it stays up to par with your expectations – things have really taken off now!

Bella didn’t even have time to fully enter her room before a hand grasped her wrist and jerked her inside and into what felt like a wall. Her backpack was dropped to the floor in the tumult. She hadn’t recovered completely from Leah’s most recent mood swing at the diner and thought cynically to herself why it was that she couldn’t seem to catch a break.

She was vaguely aware of the musty, crisp scent of pine trees and creek water that wafted up into her nose from the appealing mess of black hair just under her chin, but her confusion stemmed from being so suddenly crowded.

“Uh Alice, I missed you too but…” she chuckled awkwardly and tried to push gently on Alice’s strong shoulders to get some space. There was a short quiet growl in response to her efforts.

Alice’s body steeled itself; Bella might as well have tried nudging a mountain for how much she moved at her efforts. The growl gave her reason to pause in the solid cage of her friend’s unbreakable embrace; the vampire seemed… erratic, and she wasn’t thrilled at the thought of possibly agitating that.

_Well, crap._

The fight-or-flight response in her brain didn’t exactly flare, but it was tinkling a bit in the background of Bella’s consciousness and steadily getting louder by the second as Alice’s face turned up under her jaw, inhaling. The grouchy pixie’s body was uncharacteristically shaking, and her chest was rapidly expanding and contracting due to the deep, quick breaths she was taking.

Bella froze in place possibly more rigidly than before when it dawned on her that Alice was smelling her.

_Shit! Is she gonna—no, she said she’d never—_

Alice had _said_ she’d never hurt her. But still, her behavior wasn’t anything that Bella had been prepared for and she couldn’t say she was a fan either, especially not in the light of her day at school, and the meeting with Leah afterwards that had gone wrong in almost every way.

She swallowed nervously and opened her mouth in preparation for voicing her concerns.

The vampire left the spot under her jawline that she seemed to try to literally absorb through her nose and proceeded to rub her cheek along the left side of the warm neck, shoulder, and collarbone in front of her. Bella’s mouth first flapped open comically and then closed abruptly as a whimper was about to escape through it.

_What’s she doing, rubbing against me? Marking me?!_

“Alice, that is enough,” Bella tried to push her away again, “I said: that’s enough!” she said more forcefully when her new attempt only got her another growl from the vampire holding her almost entirely immobile in her strong arms.

Alice jerked – her involuntary spasm so powerful that Bella was jerked by extension – and pulled back her splayed hands from the human’s now-rigid spine. There was a very real risk that Bella would be sore there later – maybe even bruised – because she hadn’t been entirely in control of her strength.

She balled up her hands into fists at her side to combat the urge to dive right back at Bella, scent her and mark her so that every single vampire around knew who she belonged to. No, she couldn’t let herself do that – no matter what her most atavistic instincts told her; a voice in the back of her own mind admonished her, told her that it wasn’t her prerogative to decide who Bella belonged to.

This reasoning part of her, however, had been shuffled far back – crammed into a tiny recess of her vast mind – to make place for her raging instincts. Like a powerful river’s current, those instincts had almost dragged her under between the time when she’d fled the parking lot of Forks High School and Bella’s future had blackened out, to when she’d seen the human begin her drive home from somewhere in Forks’ town center.

“What got into you? Y-you know I’m not… I’m not _used_ to this! You can’t ju-just jump me when I come home!” Bella admonished her as well, and the animalistic part of her wanted to hiss defiantly at a _human_ taking the liberty of talking down on her like this, but she managed to rein in that impulse, which filled her with a sense of pride.

She knew what being under the sway of those instincts were like – she’d both willingly and unwillingly had them take command of her before – but she didn’t want to appear this _base_ in front of Bella. This near-uncontrollable urge to practically swarm the human with her own presence put the human on edge. And even if that urge was oftentimes manageable, Alice still recognized it as inescapable on account of what she was.

She absolutely despised the thought of scaring her mate. Now if she could just _back away_ from Bella to calm the situation down.

Bella seized command of the situation when she failed to and backed two steps away from her. The absence of the warm human’s body was upsetting, but Alice dug her nails into her palms and the feeling faded.

“Alice, answer me please? I want you to explain what the hell that was,” the young woman said, her voice barely containing her displeasure. Alice winced.

“I’m sorry, Bella… I was, I-I got a bit overwhelmed. You—something happened earlier, a-and I didn’t—”

“You’re not making much sense,” she was running out of patience.

“I’m trying!” the vampire hollered and bared her teeth, the edge of her voice taking on a snarling quality.

She immediately clamped a hand over her mouth as it registered in her overworked mind, below her boiling instincts, that she was acting out. But the human still took a shocked stumbling step backwards from her at the inhuman sound; unable to curb her fear of this part of her vampire friend.

Bella knew the fear had its root in the traumatic events of Christmas Day when Alice had leapt across the living room and almost attacked her for a reason she still didn’t understand; that situation had come right out of the blue, much like this one. Anxiety and stress battled against her naiveté and Alice’s promise of how she’d never hurt her, and she had to actively clamp down on the impulse to make for the door in a hurried escape.

“I’m sorry—I’m saying that a lot, aren’t I…? I’m a bit… harrowed by events that happened today, a-and then I didn’t _see you_ —I thought something h-had happened to you…!” Alice rambled, clearly distraught.

Bella reflexively retraced her steps to Alice’s quivering form and placed her respective hands on her shoulders, the sight of her so honestly upset stirring up sympathy in the younger woman. Thankfully, Charlie was still at work – although, he should be getting home any minute – because he would have wondered what all the commotion in Bella’s room was about.

“Alice, I’m okay. It’s okay. See, I’m here,” she comforted the tiny and visibly upset vampire.

She wasn’t entirely sure why or where it was coming from, but the sight of Alice so distressed overruled whatever reservations she had about being close to the vampire in her current mood.

Alice just breathed deeply for a few seconds, trying to calm herself down. Her emotions were finicky things; if suddenly spurred on by circumstance or left unchecked by a need for discretion they would often fuel her more animalistic instincts to overrule her common sense – as had happened just now with Bella. She wanted to reassure the human that she hadn’t thought of hurting her, even if she had been behaving erratically, but that reassurance would hold little weight right now.

“Did you… You wouldn’t happen to mean that you saw me bumping into two, uh, maybe-vampires at school?” Bella whispered, drawing a natural conclusion from what Alice said.

Her nostrils flared in anger at Bella’s mention of two vampires being physically close to her human; the thought of one of them _touching_ her, and the other _snarling_ at her from across a parking lot made her want to run out into the night to find and destroy them.

“That’s a ‘yes’ then,” Bella interpreted her reaction as an affirmative, “but I’m okay, see? Besides I meant to talk to you about that when I came home, they were sort of strange and I wasn’t really sure that they were, you know, _like you_ until just now.”

“Where were you?!” the small supernatural exclaimed before she could stop herself.

Technically, she was aware that Bella’s whereabouts was none of her business, but the worry Alice had felt for her mate – being unable to see her future for two hours – had riled her up. Only once the human sat in her truck and decided to make a legally questionable turn to get home as fast as possible, had her visions showed her again – free from the hazy darkness.

Her very dominant trait of self-preservation had been the only reason why she’d not run headlong back into the Forks’ town center with her gift still blinded – no telling what situation she could have ended up in – when Bella hadn’t come home as expected.

“You’re not in a position to demand that,” Bella said and squinted her eyes at Alice, annoyed and defiant.

After having disappeared from her life for almost eight years she felt that Alice had no right to demand where she was spending two hours of her free time after school, regardless of the circumstances. Not to mention that it was pretty shady behavior for anyone to exert that control over another person.

Alice at least had the forbearance to look guilty and apologetic:

“I know… I don’t mean to be controlling. I just—I’m so angry that I wasn’t close enough to protect you!”

“I get that, Alice, alright? But how you acted just now wasn’t okay. I… I really wish you’d been there though, when I figured out that they weren’t human, I-I was really scared the whole day. Especially of that blonde woman who practically glared daggers at me the entire rest of the day…”

“I was there, just… outside,” Alice said and grimaced, “I sat on the roof of the school for most of the day.”

_Oh! Did she see what happened in the cafeteria before it did, came to check up on me?_

The _how’s_ and _why’s_ weren’t even important, because just the fact that Alice had been there – somewhere close-by – meant so much. It also gave the young woman a new understanding of Alice’s behavior since she’d come home; having no knowledge of where Bella had gone after she’d bumped into two random vampires, and then stewing in that anxiety for hours, made her conduct somewhat more acceptable.

“Alice… Thank you. I mean, for being there – even if I couldn’t see you. My phone freaking ran out of battery around noon, I-I was gonna text you. You can’t just strut inside the school with those…” Bella said and hinted at Alice’s dark red eyes, “not to mention with the two, uh, vampires there. W-what’s even up with that? How do they just walk around in there, among hundreds of students?”

“I’m not sure,” Alice said, unable to conceal her uncertainty and frustration at the strange incident.

“Wait, why weren’t you there when my classes ended?”

“The blonde one caught my scent when she came outside, she would have chased after me if I remained. I suspect she smelled me on your clothes earlier in the day and made the connection then. But I left before she had any reason to look for me,” Alice explained but stopped short, and Bella could tell that she wanted to say more.

“What is it?”

“I should have let her see me so that she would have come for me. I don’t particularly _enjoy_ destroying others of my kind – even if I’m supposed to – but she _threatened_ yo—”

“Alice! You can’t just kill her, for Christ’s sake!”

“Well, ‘killing’ someone implies that they’re even alive to begin with…” Alice muttered darkly, too quietly for the human’s ears to pick up and then continued in a normal tone, “I need to protect you, Bella!”

“Yeah, well that’s not how I wanna be protected!” Bella protested and crossed her arms over her chest, she wouldn’t allow Alice to protect her by going around and killing people!

For better or worse, the two vampires were enrolled students at Forks High; no matter how possibly justifiable it was, if they mysteriously vanished two days after their arrival there would certainly spring up all sorts of unwanted attention. And there’d still be two of them left – if what Bella had heard was anything to go by.

Eric had mentioned how the siblings were the adopted kids of the wealthy couple who had just moved into a custom-made, newly built house in the woods north of Forks. Meaning Emmett Cullen’s and Rosalie Hale’s parents were likely vampires as well.

“There are four of them!” Bella tried, hoping to appeal to Alice’s sense of self-preservation.

She wasn’t sure what Alice was capable of, but she doubted that her barely five-foot tall friend could take on four vampires by herself – at least one of whom had the mass and likely strength of a wrecking ball – regardless of her abilities. Alice’s eyes flung open in shock.

“How do you know that?”

“They’re supposedly the kids of this new couple that moved to Forks over the winter break. They had a house built in the woods north of Forks somewhere along the 101. I mean, if these two newcomers are vampires, I doubt that their parents are human? Or, like, even their parents to begin with?”

Alice glanced curiously at Bella; a corner of her mouth pulling up in a brief sardonic smile, but it quickly fell away – the situation wasn’t exactly optimal for smiling.

“That’s perceptive, Bella,” she said instead, to which Bella gave an awkward huff.

“It wasn’t even technically my discovery,” she tried.

“It makes sense. I suspect they’re posing as parents and children to integrate themselves into human society – that’d be an easy cover story if two of them can pass as high school students. But I don’t know why they would _want_ to integrate themselves like this in the first place…”

“So, like, what am I gonna do? I can’t just stop going to school.”

“I feel half-tempted to run away from here and take you with me,” Alice admitted, “but I know that you’d never agree to that.”

“You’re right,” Bella replied flatly.

There was no way she was fleeing Forks in the middle of the night. Or any other time of day either, for now. She had no place to go – returning to Phoenix was out of the question – and she couldn’t just leave Charlie behind. He’d likely start a nationwide manhunt for her if she just disappeared.

“I don’t know how to play this, Bella. I haven’t seen any of them, so I can’t actively search for visions of their futures – I can only try to visualize my own and yours for possible encounters with them…” Alice began, and Bella almost reached over and shook her when she’d been stock-still and quiet for half a minute, “As it stands now, I can’t see myself encountering any of them unless I decide to go look, I saw… the blonde one, and the large one. And… vaguely, a smaller woman, long darker hair, older perhaps…”

“The third one isn’t ringing any bells; I don’t have any names for them. Can’t say I saw anyone else sticking out like the two at school did.”

“They’ll likely show up soon enough,” the vampire’s voice carried a frighteningly cold sub-tone, but Bella tried not to think about that too much right now.

“So, how bad is this?” she asked instead, worrying her lip. A coven of four vampires had decided to make Forks their home, but what could that mean for the humans in town?

“Bad. I don’t want them anywhere close to you. You could have gone unnoticed by them, amongst all the other students, if it hadn’t been for my scent on your clothes. Once they picked up on it, you became interesting – you confirmed that there’s at least one more vampire in town.”

“For the people of Forks,” Bella clarified, and Alice met her with an uncharacteristically somber look.

“They will draw too much attention to themselves if they _frolic_ locally, considering they seem to be here to stay for a good while. That would be bad for the townsfolk, yes. Since they are experienced enough to reside and interact within a human community, they’ll probably seek areas further away.”

Bella’s stomach roiled at Alice’s words – nothing that she’d said were things the young woman wanted to hear.

“So, people are going to be in danger, just not here…” she mumbled morosely.

Alice winced at the sadness evident on her human’s face and in her tone. She knew she had to point out the facts and correct her – it was the honest thing to do, to explain the reality behind what this really meant – but she wasn’t sure Bella was ready to absorb that knowledge yet. She wished things were different because she _knew_ what Bella’s reaction was going to be.

“Yes. But even if they hadn’t come here, humans somewhere else would have been… in danger, from these ones, or someone else,” Alice chose to keep her wording as innocent as she could, given the gravity of the situation.

“I know…” the human sighed out, and aura of defeat in her stance and tone.

Alice knew that Bella had something else she wanted to ask – was probably going to ask – by her tense posture and suspended breath. She didn’t even need her gift to know it.

“Does it, you know… _hurt_?” the young woman eventually asked. Clarification on what exactly Bella meant was unnecessary at this point; she was asking about the act of feeding.

The vampire had seen this coming – she’d known that she would have to explain to Bella at some point what feeding for someone like her meant for those involved – but, naively, she’d held out hope that this conversation was still some time away. Because Bella’s reaction would be near inevitable no matter what she replied, Alice hadn’t been sure she was equipped to handle it, to steer things back on track, regardless of when they got into it.

“It does.”

“Oh…” Bella looked miserable. It was evident to Alice that she, too, wished things were different.

“Do you… _hurt_ people too, Alice?” Bella asked quietly in a wavering voice, reminiscent of a much younger version of herself. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that question, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

For her entire younger life, when Alice had been her strange but kind and loving imaginary friend, Bella had idolized her in a way fitting a young impressionable kid towards an older and much more worldly-wise authority figure.

Then, Alice had disappeared from her life, to Bella’s knowledge, and the young human had all but forgotten about her over the years – only recalling memories of her odd friend at times when she felt particularly sad or lonely.

As Alice reintroduced herself to Bella’s life the adolescent had been forced to reevaluate many things about her life and her past – but also what implications Alice being a vampire would have on her present and future life and morals.

At her question Alice sighed, and her expression seemed to cloud over – almost like she was struck by a sudden daze – and like that, Bella knew the answer.

////

“Bella…” Alice pleaded out loud in reaction to the finale of the vision playing in the back of her mind; Bella deciding to pull away from her, when Alice didn’t immediately deny the implications her inquiry carried.

Bella stood before her, still, apparently dumbstruck for the moment. But Alice knew that her vision would come true within seconds unless she made a monumental effort to save the situation, to steer Bella away from her most reflexive reaction – unless she bought herself time to explain.

“Your father will be home in less than a minute, he’s about to park his vehicle in your driveway. I… Let us talk about this, but this is not a good place to do it.”

“Go wait outside,” Bella said in a frighteningly monotonous voice, “by my truck. We’ll talk about it in the car, go for a drive. I just need to greet dad first.”

Alice wanted to touch the human, place a comforting hand on her shoulder – just _something_ to quell the anxiety welling up within herself. But she held back, legitimately afraid that Bella would pull away if she saw Alice approach her. So, she just nodded at the instructions given to her and went over to the window to leave for the moment.

Bella watched as Alice climbed out on the windowsill, she blinked and just like that Alice was gone. Bella released a heavy breath she wasn’t aware that she’d been holding.

“Bella, you home?” Charlie shouted from downstairs as he entered the house, thankfully interrupting Bella’s galloping mind.

She turned around to pick up her phone and keys from her desk and a random hoodie that was slung over the chair, then made her way downstairs – meticulously measuring out her every step. If she focused hard on the small tasks at hand until she got outside, she wouldn’t have to consider that she was just about to go for a drive with a potential killer. A potential killer who loved her. That was far too much for Bella’s mind to chew all at once.

“Hey Charlie. How was work?” Bella asked her father managing to keep her voice relatively neutral.

_Don’t freak out before you get inside the car,_ raced on repeat through her head, like a mantra, while she made casual conversation with her father.

She couldn’t just run out on him the minute he came home; that would make him suspicious of what she was up to. With his 18 years as an officer of the law – of which almost 10 as Chief of Police – he was resourceful and bound to discover what and whom Bella kept hidden from him if he caught the trail.

Besides, Bella reasoned, he deserved to actually get to talk to her between his work, and her school and subsequent isolation in her room where she secretly hung out with Alice – and insisted on not being disturbed.

“Calm as usual. You’re heading out?” Charlie asked and eyed his daughter sharply.

“Uh, yeah. Was gonna meet up with, uh, Eric,” she lied, and immediately cursed herself at the name her brain grabbed for a quick excuse.

They hadn’t talked about curfews since Bella moved in, and now she was heading out at night to meet up with a _male_ friend during the week. She might as well have asked Charlie to board up the windows and doors. Because they hadn’t talked much about _things_ since Bella came to Forks, he wasn’t even aware of the fact that Bella wasn’t that into boys in the first place. She had so far in her life never been attracted to a man in that way – and none of the boys at her school were exceptions, while having been attracted to women since she was at least 15. But Charlie was still unaware of that.

“…what?” Charlie let out, clearly taken by surprise.

If it wasn’t for the internal meltdown she was suffering, she would have laughed out loud at the blank expression on his face – he clearly hadn’t expected that.

“Uh, it’s Eric and Angela and Jessica! I’m meeting them in town, just gonna hang at the coffeeshop next to school,” Bella hurriedly added.

“We’re gonna talk about this when you get home, just… drive safe. I want you home by 10PM at the latest,” Charlie eventually got out.

He was inexperienced enforcing rules – that technically didn’t exist yet – with his own daughter, and it stressed him out.

“Uh, sure Dad. I’ll text you when I get there. I’ll probably be home before 10 anyways.”

Bella hurried to throw on her jacket and left the house. As the front door closed behind her, she let out a loud exhale on the front-porch – her breath fogging up in the evening chill. Great, she thought to herself, Charlie was bound to obsess over her lame white lie and probably try to give her the birds-and-bees talk later. She shivered in horror at the thought.

She cursed her brain again for its lack of grace and walked over to her truck. When she climbed in at the driver’s side and started the engine the passenger-door opened, and Alice quietly slid into the seat next to Bella. If she hadn’t been prepared, she would have screamed in fright at suddenly noticing the stealthy vampire in her periphery-vision.

“You sure you’re not a ninja?” Bella asked unable to help herself – her brain-to-mouth coordination wasn’t on top that evening.

“Positive; no shuriken or smoke-grenades here,” Alice bantered back reflexively, but her voice lacked the usual glee.

“We can stop at a rest-stop on the 101, I’m not sure I can talk about this and focus on the road at the same time.”

“You can’t,” Alice filled in not-so-helpfully.

“Thanks,” Bella mumbled dryly, and Alice had to fight a grin from pulling her lips up against her will – Bella just had that effect on her.

Their conversation was stilted and stiff, as if they had suddenly become strangers to each other. Bella appeared to have regressed to some type of stand-by mode where only the bare necessities to accomplish her task was possible; she was resolutely staring out the windshield – occasionally flickering her eyes to the rearview mirror – as she drove through the empty streets of outer Forks.

Bella figured driving around Forks was risky and wanted to get out onto the highway as soon as possible; if someone she knew saw her with a random stranger in the passenger-seat she was bound to be bombarded with questions later. And driving north of Forks seemed like a bad idea considering that the newly moved-in coven of vampires lived somewhere there along Route 101. Anything to minimize the risk that they bumped into them was wise, she reasoned – she had enough on her plate as it was.

“So, I guess I’m gonna drive south of Forks?” she double-checked.

“That works.”

It didn’t take long to get out onto the highway, and after ten minutes of driving Bella found a rest-stop pocket along the road that she pulled into. The inside of the car had warmed up, but she was reluctant to leave it running while they talked so it was bound to get cold quickly. She was glad she had thought of bringing a hoodie.

After turning off the car she sent a text to her father to placate him where he was no doubt worrying to death back home. While she had her phone up, she decided to text Leah as well. No harm in asking her if she was okay from earlier in the afternoon. Besides, she needed a few more seconds to gather herself for the conversation she knew she was about to have with Alice.

Taking a deep breath to the point that her lungs almost hurt and releasing it, Bella uttered:

“So…?”

“You should know that I always meant to be completely honest with you, I don’t want to hide anything from you Bella. But this… it’s… I’ve seen your most likely reaction, and because of that I kept pushing this conversation ahead of me.”

“Just tell me,” Bella said sternly, “how many are we talking about here?” she couldn’t keep a wince off her face.

A wince that Alice shared the moment she heard what Bella was really asking; _how many people have you killed?_

“I don’t have a choic—”

“Just tell me Alice,” Bella interrupted.

“I-I need you to know that I’m n—”

“Tell me!” Bella screamed.

She could count the times she had raised her voice and screamed at another person on one hand; she had picked up Charlie’s calm and analytical mentality, and if pushed and prodded she much rather walked away from an argument. But she also had a – much less influential – mini-Renée living within her, characterized by a volatile penchant for confrontation akin to her mother’s less than charming moments, that seemed to have taken charge of her now.

“I don’t know!” Alice hollered back and wrapped her tiny arms around her stomach as if her delicate frame would break in half from Bella’s loud voice.

And like that Bella’s anger evaporated. The sight of Alice’s barely five feet frame crouched up and shaking like… like an abused child, Bella realized with a startling sense of despair, served like flipping a switch in her brain.

“Alice, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t apologize for being upset Bella. It’s only fair that you are,” Alice said and looked up at her.

She was so beautiful, Bella thought to herself. So… otherworldly. That porcelain-white skin and those unnerving but captivating red eyes – now a shade of carmine. Bella couldn’t help but momentarily think about how much those eyes must have seen over the years.

“I’m a predator Bella. The _apex_ predator. I don’t know how or why we exist; I just know what I need to survive, and that’s human blood. It’s instinctual, hardwired into me. And I-I tap into that instinct when I must, to hunt humans for food. It’s my nature Bella.”

How could Bella _not_ be afraid after hearing that? After hearing her sweet, protective friend of a decade past admit how she hunts and kills humans?

“I don’t really have a choice about it. I can ignore the hunger – like any other creature can, for a while. But intentionally starving myself while there’s food all around me? That’s… harder. Impossible. There’s a breaking point to the… urges, and when that line is crossed…”

“Wh-what… what happens?”

“They’re, they become uncontrollable – _I’m_ uncontrollable. Sorry, I don’t know how to phrase it better.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve tried. And the consequences weren’t worth it,” Alice said solemnly.

“So… ordinary food?” Bella asked, a part of her naively holding on to the hope that there was something that could help Alice reform her way of living.

“I can’t digest it. It’s tastes bad, smells _strange_ , in a way I suspect it didn’t before. I can technically eat it, but I need to… eh, force it up later. Rather unpleasant.”

“Oh…” Bella mumbled, briefly disgusted by the mental image flashing in her mind. “What do you mean ‘ _suspect_ it didn’t’, though?”

Alice flicked her eyes back to Bella’s, curious and a little impressed at how she’d picked up that slip of her tongue in the middle of such a tense and strained conversation with so much else going on around them both.

“I don’t remember how human food tastes,” Alice admitted – and then decided to tell the whole truth of it to her mate, “I don’t remember anything from my human life.”

“But you said you were from Mississippi?”

“Yes, I… woke up there,” Alice said hesitantly, “But I have no memories of my human life, family, or even my full name. I don’t even know what I was… _doing there_ ,” Bella knew there was more to Alice’s last anxiously whispered words, but she decided to not try and unpack that right now – there were more pressing matters they needed to discuss.

“Oh…” she could only reply, “Is that normal?”

Alice snorted at how bluntly Bella asked her question. She supposed that the amnesia shrouding everything about her human life wasn’t normal – even by vampire-standards.

“Probably not. Every other vampire I’ve met and shared my… amnesia with have remembered their human lives, but usually vaguely. They knew who they were though…”

“I’m sorry that you can’t remember why you’re a vampire,” Bella said, filled with a strange sense of sympathy for her friend, or whatever she should call Alice following the recent revelations.

“I’ve made my peace with it,” Alice shrugged, “I like to think that there’s probably a very sensible explanation to why I can’t remember, that it’s for the best.”

Bella briefly thought back to how Alice had crouched up so passively and defenselessly for just a moment, and with a bitterness concluded that Alice probably hadn’t had the happiest of human lives.

“Um… so, how…?” Bella trailed off and tried to swallow down the lump of anxiety that was blocking her throat.

“Roughly every 3rd week, give or take a few days. More often if I use my abilities in excess, or if I’m injured.”

“Okay,” Bella replied shakily.

Making a quick calculation in her head Bella concluded that if Alice killed when she fed that meant at least one life had been lost since she came back into Bella’s life in mid-December, 24 days ago.

_One human life… someone close-by?_

Counting generously, every 20th day would mean 18 lives per year. And 180-something for the ten years Bella could recall that Alice had been a part of her life, in one way or the other.

Flinging the driver’s-door open she managed to croak out that she needed some air before stumbling out and falling to her knees on the asphalt outside. In the literal blink of an eye Alice had gotten out on her side and joined her – a worried expression etched onto her fair face.

“Bella?” the vampire asked worriedly, barely controlling the urge to reach for her.

In case her human mate was injured she pre-emptively stopped breathing – irrespective of how much her instincts screamed at her to take stock of her surroundings and protect her mate – unwilling to risk losing control of her bloodlust if her human was bleeding. She could survive completely fine without oxygen, but not breathing left her feeling antsy and paranoid because of the absence of her sense of smell. And she still needed to push air through her vocal cords in order to speak.

“Ho-how old are you?”

“I-I, what? Don’t know, been vampire since 1920. Bella, are you hurt?” Alice was hovering inches from Bella’s quivering form and keeping her words purposefully clipped to save air in case she needed to talk some more.

“Oh God,” Bella moaned – her face turning pale, “I’m gonna be sick.”

Alice was confused, a hundred thoughts and images flickering through her mind each second. As Bella uttered those words, some clarity was born to her frazzled mind. Already knowing what would transpire, she calmly followed the human as she crawled a few paces from the driver’s-side door she’d fallen out of. She quickly but precisely carded her fingers through Bella’s long brown hair, collecting all the errant strands from her face, as the young woman bent down, retched, and threw up what little she’d had for dinner.

_18 people a year, 100 years… 1800 **humans** , _Bella thought to herself, the thoughts clipped and disoriented as she emptied her stomach’s contents, _taken. By Alice._

_They had lives of their own; families, friends, people who would miss them or wonder what had happened to them…_

She retched until nothing more came up, and then shakily wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her hoodie. She felt clammy; pearls of panic-induced sweat adorning her forehead and running down her chest and back, just having emptied her stomach behind her truck parked by a so-far deserted part of the highway in the middle of the night. Alice’s strong hand helped her get up from the ground, and she blearily turned around to face her – suddenly utterly emotionally and physically drained and at a complete loss of what to say to her.

Alice’s expression conveyed to Bella that she had already made the connection between Bella’s questions and her throwing up. She felt confident that there was nothing else physically wrong with the human and took in a cautious breath to quell the anxious paranoia she felt. Having confirmed that there was no scent of blood in the air she returned to her ordinary breathing-pattern.

“I know that I can’t defend my actions to you, nothing I say will make them acceptable in your eyes. While I don’t have a choice, Bella, my gift gives me the privilege to look into a person’s future. I do my best to pick my… victims based on what lies ahead of them. These past years I’ve made a serious effort to practice my resistance, the length I can go without. For… for you,” Alice explained while she brushed the road dust of a dazed Bella’s clothes, and then folding her gaze away shamefully.

“1800 people…” Bella mumbled dejectedly, the reality and gravity of the situation beginning to hit home. For all she knew, 1800 people was probably counting it low – in reality, there could be many more victims to speak of.

“Yes... But I can’t ask for your forgiv—I… I _love_ you Bella, but the only reason I’m able to is because of what I am. I would most certainly have been dead by the 1970’s if I had remained human, I would never have met you.”

Bella’s eyes widened in shock; first at hearing Alice so bluntly state that she loved her, and then as the rest of what she said sunk in. Intellectually she knew that she would never have met Alice if she hadn’t been a vampire – she would probably have been long dead by the time Bella’s parents were born.

Alice took her silence as a cue to carry on:

“I don’t know if I willingly became a vampire or if I was made one against my will, but as we met that ceased to matter. Suddenly I had a purpose in this existence, and while it took time for me to figure out what that purpose _should_ be, I know I can’t apologize now for who I had to be – who I _have_ to be – for it to be reality.”

But the means by which Alice had survived…? Bella wasn’t sure she could ever fully conciliate those. She was only 17 – again, she hadn’t seen much of the world, she _knew_ that she knew very little about it – but hunting humans like cattle felt grossly in breach with her moral compass.

Then again… Bella ate meat. She _liked_ meat; the taste, the texture, the smell of a well-prepared and cooked steak. Even knowing how part of the animal that usually ended up on her plate was treated in life. Cattle. To be consumed by humans with a misguided vision of being the apex predator of Earth themselves – entitled to all that the planet has to offer.

Where her immediate reaction was complete horror at the bare thought of another human dying to feed someone else – let alone _being killed_ by that someone to _be eaten_ by that someone – her very next thought was the way it made an uncomfortable amount of sense in the grand scheme of everything; humans have always believed they are on the very top of the food-chain and have neatly categorized every other animal in an orderly falling scale, but that could only really be by their own self-spoken mandate.

The realization hit Bella that vampires were just doing the same thing to humans as humans had been doing to other life on Earth since the dawn of time; the food-chain had just grown a new notch at the top layer, or the humans had just been bumped down a notch – either one worked.

She was still far from okay with Alice being a killer, a _murderer,_ as she’d so bluntly admitted – it certainly required some clarification.

_Or does it? What differs one killer from another – their body-count? The reason behind their killing?_

Alice killed because she didn’t have a choice – Bella had no reason to _not_ trust her word on that, but did that make her killing people any less morally wrong? What was the alternative? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know; this was already too much to deal with. Having something logical to reason through everything with would surely help, but Bella wasn’t convinced she _wanted_ to be okay with this part of Alice.

And yet, despite everything, she seemed unable to see herself without Alice going forward; cutting her ties with the vampire wasn’t an alternative – it hadn’t ever been, and certainly not after how deeply ingrained Alice had become in her life and existence. She was less than competent to take any such informed decision any time soon, and certainly not while being so shaken up and tired, in the middle of the dense Pacific Northwestern woods with vomit on her clothes.

“I need a shower. And sleep. Alice… this is a lot,” Bella sighed. Several different expressions seemed to flash across Alice’s face – none of which she was currently in a mental state to decipher.

“I know. Do you want me to go, give you some distance?”

Alice’s self-sacrificing offer quickly albeit momentarily jerked Bella up from her mental exhaustion – something within her so decidedly against the idea of it that she almost physically clung to the vampire and begged her to stay.

“No,” she said instead – a much more normal response, “I-I want you to stay with me. Like you have these past days.”

Alice mumbled a short grateful reply, relieved that she wouldn’t have to put herself through the anxious torture of staying away from her very human and very _breakable_ mate again, especially considering the recent arrival of four new vampires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Oof_ -size:** XXL


	9. Making friends

Things resumed surprisingly ordinary for Bella following the meeting with the Cullen kids the first school-day of the new year. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it wasn’t for them to avoid her like the plague. It wasn’t that she wasn’t thankful for the reprieve – she was – but the Cullen-kids’ apparent disinterest did little to quell her worries permanently. It just didn’t make sense to her that they wouldn’t care about a human that walked around in school smelling of a foreign vampire; surely, they were planning something.

The blonde one, Rosalie, scowled at Bella if their eyes ever met, but it wasn’t often because they both seemed to make a point of sitting as far away from each other as possible during their shared classes – which was a blessing. She swore those 150 minutes four times a week was bad enough for her blood-pressure.

Bella never saw the large burly man, Emmett, outside the company of Rosalie unless they were in different classes. He casually avoided looking at Bella altogether most of the time, and the few times Bella caught him he quickly folded his gaze to look anywhere else. During lunchbreak in the cafeteria Rosalie and Emmett would occupy their own table furthest away from the servings and most other students, and seemingly ignore everyone except each other.

However, about a week after their enrollment at the school, when everyone’s courses had been settled for the new semester’s schedule, Bella was startled to find that Emmett was in her P.E. class. She remembered how Mike had said he’d been in his class on the first day of the semester, which meant that Emmett had switched slots – the administration of the small community’s school was nice that way. That was worrying; the reason for why Emmett had switched classes could be to get within close vicinity of Bella, and she wasn’t sure what that meant.

And it was there, in P.E. class, that Emmett Cullen approached Bella for the first time in the two and a half weeks he and his sister had so-far been attending the school. She had vowed to steer clear of him and had been successful for the one and a half weeks he had been in her class, but alas her luck seemed to have run out.

“That’s a wrap everybody! Good work today!” Coach Clapp shouted as the clock struck 11:30 and class was over, “Now, can someone help Ms. Swan put away all the stuff?”

It was Bella’s turn to put away the equipment; they had a rolling schedule for that. The class fell silent, no one exactly eager to get ten minutes less of their lunchbreak because of the amount of stuff that needed cleaning up. The day’s lesson had been circuit training exercises with bench jumps, medicine ball presses, rope-climbs, an object course, and more – so there was stuff all over the hall.

Bella sighed and began walking over to the medicine balls. They were heavy but at least she could kick them in front of her to the storage room.

“I can help Coach!” a voice called out suddenly, much to the few remaining students’ surprise. Bella froze with her back to the rest of the class at hearing the voice; the medicine ball rolling ahead of her.

“Thank you, Mr. Cullen,” Coach Clapp said.

Bella slowly turned around as if to check so that her ears weren’t fooling her. She briefly met Jessica’s surprised eyes across the short end of the hall, before the latter shrugged and turned towards the door to the changing rooms.

“Hey,” Emmett Cullen said to Bella, attempting to catch her attention, “Isabella, right?”

“Bella,” Bella managed to croak out in correction, looking anywhere except at Emmett’s face.

“Right. So, put me to work Bella.”

Bella was scared. She had grown comfortable with the idea of being left alone and ignored by the Cullens, and now one was speaking to her. Being friendly even. She quickly concluded that it must be some sort of trap; they were vampires for crying out loud!

Coach Clapp was leaving the hall and going for the adjoining gym teacher’s office, and Bella desperately wanted to scream for him not to leave her alone with Emmett. But she clamped down on that impulse; she couldn’t very well make such a big scene with nothing real to back it up with. Screaming ‘vampire!!!’ at the top of her lungs and pointing at Emmett seemed very counter-productive.

“Eh, just do whatever,” Bella mumbled when it became apparent that Emmett was waiting for instructions.

She hadn’t really made an effort during the actual class; P.E. wasn’t really her forte, but this forced and frightening interaction with Emmett was really making her build up a sweat. Not to mention her pulse; she was sure Emmett could hear her heartbeat hammering away, and that put her even more on edge.

Emmett gave her a curious look, his bright golden eyes meeting Bella’s for just a split second before the human looked away, and he gave a low chuckle to disarm the tense situation. Bella turned back to her medicine balls when she saw Emmett go for one of the portable benches and prayed that he would leave her alone.

“What was growing up in Forks like?” Emmett asked a few minutes later, breaking the silence.

They were nearly done cleaning up, and Bella had almost been able to pretend that she wasn’t alone in a large building at the edge of campus with a vampire because of how quiet and non-intrusive Emmett was. That false sense of security flew right out the window the second he spoke. Bella stiffened again, wishing that she was cold enough to completely ignore him. Then again, she didn’t know how he would interpret being ignored.

“I didn’t grow up here, so I wouldn’t know,” she replied, doing a decent job of faking nonchalance.

“Really? Cool, that’s something we have in common then!” Emmett perked up, “Where did you grow up?”

_He’s faking it_ , Bella was convinced that he wasn’t as unaware as he seemed.

“Arizona,” Bella replied flatly, and then – reflexively trying to turn the table on the conversation to make it less uncomfortable – she deflected the question back at Emmett.

“All over the place really. I was born in Tennessee though. Last couple of years we lived in Beckley, West Virginia.”

“So why did you move here?” Bella followed up; it didn’t hurt to have some background information on the new vampires in town, she reasoned.

“My father is a doctor and he got an offer from the hospital here.”

Bella was taken aback at that. Somehow Emmett’s father being a doctor rhymed very badly with him being a vampire as well. Not that she was entirely sure that he was, she had never met him or the Cullen kids’ supposed mother. The only way it made sense to her was if they used his position to have easy access to blood.

She couldn’t quell the feeling of disgust that welled up within her; what if the Cullens took advantage of sick and weak people at the hospital in order to feed? Maybe people who wouldn’t make it anyways, and so no one would bat an eye when they silently passed away? Or perhaps they swipe bags from the blood-bank at the hospital, meant for emergency situations?

Bella didn’t notice that Emmett returned Bella’s question to her, curious as to why she had moved to Forks herself. He finished tying up the ropes and deposited them in the storage, and when he turned to look at his classmate again, he found her standing in the same place with the same half-vacant look in her eyes.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, and took a few steps closer to Bella.

Emmett stepping closer to her – he was maybe only three feet away – snapped Bella out of her fuzz:

“Don’t!” she yelped, alarmed at suddenly having a stranger who happened to be vampire invading her personal sphere, “I gotta go.”

She quickly turned on her heel and half-walked, half-ran towards the changing rooms.

////

Bella was absentmindedly flipping through some messages in the chat she had with her friends while walking up to her room, which was risky considering her limited sense of coordination and the many times she’d stumbled up or down stairs even _without_ looking at a phone – clearly, she hadn’t learned a lesson yet.

Eric was sharing a bunch of stupid memes that would have had Bella folded up double from laughter if she didn’t have so much on her mind. As things were, the knowledge that she apparently _only_ had to slap a chicken filet at 3725 miles per hour to instantly cook it just made her snort and shake her head good-naturedly.

She was trying to figure out how to go about telling Alice what little she’d learned from her encounter with Emmett at school – or rather what it meant – and how to broach the plan she had with Alice without the vampire going ballistic.

“A doctor?” Alice asked a moment later as she’d taken up her usual position behind Bella once the human had settled on the bed. She was perplexed with Bella’s retelling of her encounter with Emmett.

She didn’t have any reason to doubt what she’d been told, but a vampire – Emmett’s supposed ‘father’ – working as a doctor struck her as absurd; she couldn’t even fathom the restraint required to constantly be around blood and injured humans and not lose control.

“Yeah,” Bella said and lightly traced Alice’s forearm seemingly casually – but in fact strategically – slung around her waist with her fingers.

Alice was in a mood, _fuming_ from the knowledge that she couldn’t stop the vampires in Bella’s school from approaching the human whenever they wanted without causing a wholly unwanted scene and possibly a lot of death and destruction. She did her best to tone down the instinct whispering within her to crowd Bella’s space as she came home every afternoon, and that had actually been easier than expected once it became apparent that the Cullens, as they were known, had seemed to settle on ignoring Bella at all costs. She wasn’t fooled though; they were planning something.

And now, two weeks of this avoidance-policy seemed to have given way to something else, now that the large male had approached Bella. Were they perhaps setting some sort of plan in motion?

“That is surprisingly well-organized by them, if they use it as a source of easily accessible blood. They might have worked by that system for many years, if it works well enough to allow them to live comfortably and interact within human society.”

“Which means what Alice?”

“That they might be very old and experienced,” Alice replied solemnly, and lightly squeezed Bella’s frame to share the sudden sense of despair she felt.

There was simply no way she could dispose of these four by herself; she was sure they never went anywhere alone, and even if they did she was convinced that the other three would know what had transpired if one of them suddenly went missing – and come for Bella.

Things had been bumpy after the evening where Bella had been confronted by the reality of what Alice’s condition meant – her dietary requirements and her body-count, to be specific.

She’d still been allowed to hold the human at night, and Bella’s chock had gradually worn off over the coming few days – days in which Alice made her strongest effort yet to tone down her instincts and avoid any talk about her condition or vampires in general. Bella needed time to adjust. Although, it had proven difficult not to talk about vampires when a four-member coven had just moved into town and were nestling themselves into _everything_.

Bella adjusted her semi-relaxed position against Alice’s hard body, it was a trying task to properly relax laying against someone who could have very well been a stone bench.

Her trust in Alice had slowly but surely rebuilt in the days following her revelation some two weeks ago. She somehow managed to not think so much about the fact that her… _friend_ was a killer – apparently forced by circumstance rather than willingly, if her other confessions that night were anything to go by – but she still thought to herself at night what that actually said about _her._ What did that say about Bella’s own character and moral compass, if she was so willing to accept the murderous nature of her mate so long as it meant that she could keep her in her life?

Nevertheless, she had awoken one morning a couple of days after their talk – still during the Cullens’ avoidance-policy – and realized that everything she so far knew about Alice told her that the vampire wouldn’t kill people unless she had to. There wasn’t a truly cruel cell in her body, even if she had occasional issues with controlling her impulses or the instincts which she’d said time and time again were ingrained in her.

Alice’s predicament – having to kill people to be able to experience this _thing_ she and Bella had between them – wasn’t voluntary. At this point, she knew this: if the vampire had been anything like she was now while still human a century ago, there was nothing about her that suggested to Bella that she would have voluntarily jumped on the chance of becoming this immortal, bloodthirsty creature.

The consideration of accepting this part of Alice took many days to mature into a decision Bella knew she would have to make, but now she had and was finally comfortable in Alice’s company again. Part of her still longed for the nostalgic, naïve simplicity that had colored their relationship while Bella was younger, though.

“Well fuck.”

“I’m liking this less and less Bella. I need to know that you’re safe, it’s all that goes through my head when I look at you. They’re dangerous, they might _grab y_ —”

“Alice,” Bella interrupted her, a growl brewing just under the surface of her mate’s words, “it’s okay. The fact that Emmett attempted to talk to me today might mean that they wish to approach us. Not sure of their motive but they might be curious as to why there’s a girl in their school that smells of another vampire they haven’t met yet.”

“ _Bella_ ,” Alice warned, her voice low and gruff, “I won’t allow it,” her arms perceptibly tightened around Bella’s frame as if to keep the human from executing her plan that same moment. She couldn’t help herself.

“Allow what, Alice?” Bella demanded, not taking well to being told what not to do. All the sneaking-around, constantly-looking-over-her-shoulder game was wearing on her, and she just wanted some peace of mind.

“What you were about to propose. You’d be left completely defenseless!”

“It’s not like you couldn’t get there in, like, a few seconds, right?”

“They can snap your neck in _less_ than a second!” Alice shouted, very upset by the topic of Bella meeting the Cullen-siblings outside of school to try and diplomatically solve the tension.

“You’re not the one that have to walk around all day looking over your shoulder, wondering just when a crazy blonde vampire will body-check you into a row of lockers and drain you dry,” Bella countered.

Alice growled quietly at the blunt way Bella laid it out for her, a brief frame of a vision popping up in her head depicting the human’s pale and lifeless body in a heap on a forest floor. It could happen, and that terrified her.

“Okay,” Bella began and took a deep breath to gather herself and cool down the situation; navigating Alice’s recent mood-swings since the Cullens came to town was like navigating a minefield while blindfolded, “What about in school? Like, I can approach Emmett slowly over a few days, he seems friendly enough. Initiate a conversation in public? Maybe try to figure out if they have any plans or whatever. What they know.”

“He’s not friendly! He wants to get close to you and sink his teeth in here,” Alice said and poked at the pulse-point on Bella’s neck from behind her, still riled up from the vision of Bella’s corpse drained of blood.

“But you don’t know that, right? You haven’t seen it?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Alice said, loath to bring up the brief flicker of the vision, “It’s what any vampire would want if they got the chance!”

“Even you?” Bella countered, fed up for the afternoon with Alice’s exaggerated paranoia.

Alice huffed a breath angrily through her nose at the human’s snide remark. Bella closed her eyes tiredly; she knew it was a low blow poking with a stick at the big red gash that was Alice’s bloodthirst just to get her to shut up for a second. She was slightly ashamed of that.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly and moved her hand to squeeze Alice’s that was still linked around her stomach.

“It’s okay. I know it is not easy for you, being in this position,” Alice said and returned the squeeze.

“Great,” Bella chirped with exaggerated glee, “that settles it! I’ll talk to Emmett at school. Happy we could agree.”

She could practically feel how Alice’s expression mulled over, and she decided to drop the conversation at that. She’d still go ahead and do what she said, when she had worked up the courage. They really had no other option.

“Bella, if all four of them decided to come for you I wouldn’t stand a chance fighting them off. I would have to take you and run.”

Both knew that Alice couldn’t hope to take out four vampires possibly centuries older than herself if it came to a fight. The only other option was to wait it out and risk that the Cullens got fed up with the hide-and-seek and forcibly tried to find and possibly get rid of Alice – and Bella would be the perfect target in order to incite a skirmish.

“Then we’ll make that decision when— _if_ the time comes.”

////

“Hey Bella,” Emmett greeted Bella as she walked past him and Rosalie in the hallway on her way to her first class of the day.

Bella gave a habitual nod of acknowledgement – like she would have if any other classmate greeted her spontaneously – taken completely by surprise from the gesture. Judging by the way Rosalie whipped her head towards Emmett she was equally as surprised. Bella may have talked big and boldly about approaching Emmett to Alice, to get some information at the very least, but she wasn’t prepared for him being so open and approachable in public.

“Uh, hello? Why the heck was Emmett Cullen greeting you?” Jessica asked in a whisper as she walked beside Bella.

“I don’t know,” Bella replied.

“Oh my God! Does he have a thing for you?!” Jessica hollered.

“Jess!” Bella admonished.

Over the buzzing talk of the students in the corridor she heard a loud booming laugh from somewhere behind her, sounding suspiciously like the kind of laugh a certain Emmett Cullen could have.

_Oh fuck_ , she thought to herself, _of course he – **and Rosalie** – overheard us._

“He does, doesn’t he? First that thing in P.E. yesterday, and now he’s greeting you in public!” Jessica legitimately _squealed_ in excitement – a sound Bella never thought she’d have the displeasure of hearing, “Gosh Bella, I didn’t take you for being into bad boys.”

“Jessica, nothing’s going on. Now shush!” Bella said with a tint of panic in her voice that went unnoticed by Jessica. She knew if she glanced back, she would likely find Emmett grinning at her and Rosalie glaring daggers at her. 

Emmett Cullen and Rosalie Hale may have officially been known as the Cullen-siblings – the adopted kids of Doctor and Mrs. Cullen – but because Bella knew of their true nature, she was convinced that the chance of them being actual blood-siblings was next to nil. She’d seen their relationship for what it actually was.

They were mates, she was certain that they shared the same connection with each other that Alice shared with her – a connection she herself couldn’t truly reciprocate because she was human.

Something with the way Rosalie and Emmett looked at each other or touched each other gave it away to Bella; it was the same way that Alice looked at her. And with that knowledge came the reasonable assumption that they were probably very possessive of each other – if what Alice had so far explained to her was generally applicable – and with the way Rosalie already hated Bella from day one, she was afraid to add even more reason for the icicle disguised as a supermodel to detest her.

“If I hear that rumor anywhere from now on, I’ll know you were the one who spread it and I will personally strangle you,” Bella mock-threatened Jessica, who blew out a disappointed sigh and promised not to spread the rumor.

The Cullen-kids had turned into Forks High’s social pariahs in no time at all from their enrollment at the school. Their family was wealthy, they were ridiculously good-looking, and – here is where it all crashed and burned – _entirely_ disinterested in correcting themselves into the social hierarchy already established at the school.

Rumor was that at least 20 people had asked Rosalie out on a date the first two weeks, and every junior and senior student in the most popular social cliques had approached her at least once to recruit her into their fold. In the best-case scenario she had completely ignored them or declined with one single syllable – an ice-queen through and through.

Emmett – because he was tall, muscular, and self-assured – attracted a lot of attention, adoration and fawning over from most every type of student. His physical stature coupled with his trademark shit-eating grin, rumored silly impulsiveness, and carefree attitude had painted him as the King of Bad Boys, much to the popular male cliques’ chagrin.

Both siblings were completely confident to stay away from school-politics. It didn’t take long for that confidence to be interpreted as arrogance, and most of the students – many whom felt scorned, or had been ignored or rejected by Rosalie – decided that the Cullens thought themselves better than or above everyone else at school. That mixed with the obvious jealousy over the siblings’ beauty and wealth made for a volatile blend.

Bella saw the deeply ingrained insecurities of this large collective of hormonal teenagers for what it was – like them, being forced to spend the majority of her week crammed together into the same environment. But that didn’t mean she was immune to the effects of those same social norms herself.

Associating with the Cullens – in any way not mandatory by a class – quickly morphed from being coveted and attainable to undesirable and possibly even traitorous. Best-case scenario if one was caught doing so or openly expressing that intent was raised eyebrows and judgmental stares and whispers, and in worse-case scenario grounds for ostracism and open microaggression from the most meaningful social cliques.

Bella may not have given two shits about pleasing the popular groups; the Preps, the Cheerleaders – pretty much any of the who’s-who’s or older students – and certainly no one from Lauren and Logan Mallory’s respective sect of Mean Girls and Jocks, but she had enough on her plate as it was. Attending Forks High was supposed to have been smooth sailing towards her High School diploma, but the harmony of her social and emotional life had practically turned belly up since she arrived in the small rural town. And she wasn’t thrilled of making things even worse by so radically going against the stream.

////

When those small seemingly innocent greetings from Emmett had gone on for one and a half week – drawing too much attention, whispers, and stares for Bella’s liking – she decided that enough was enough and that she would grab the figurative – or literal, perhaps – bull by the horns the next time it showed up, and get it over with.

Alice knew of her intentions; they had discussed it countless times in the past weeks – and she had voiced her dislike just as many times. Bella’s vampire mate was anxious or testy most of the time these days and had been very on-board and supportive of Bella’s decisions to avoid or escape from social situations featuring Emmett.

She had been less than thrilled when she had been made aware of Bella’s final decision to confront the large vampire, as evidenced by a single text-message sent to Bella’s phone that read ‘I don’t like this’.

Bella sat in the library after her classes had ended for the day; she needed to get some actual work done on her AP English-paper that was due in two days.

Alice had been moody to say the least and had spent more time than usual away from Bella’s room. When she was there, she was a distracted mess for most of the time and Bella failed to study, and when she wasn’t there, Bella worried as to what she was up to and failed to study. So now she had decided to stay unaware of Alice’s status and remain at school until it either closed for the night or until she had her paper done.

The silence and time alone also gave her a rare opportunity to think about how she would handle the Cullen-situation. Discussing it with Alice at home or on the weekends was neigh-impossible, and during school and the weekdays she was distracted by classes and the gang’s usual banter and hangouts.

Bella still hadn’t worked up the courage to initiate a greeting – despite what she had vowed to Alice much to the vampire’s aggravation – mostly because Emmett usually beat her to it. And she usually found herself mumbling or stiffly returning her reply as her anxiety and stress spiked, before hurrying off to her class ahead of her schedule.

“Hi Bella,” a voice greeted, and Bella jumped. The pen that she had been absentmindedly twirling between her fingers went flying, and she couldn’t keep from uttering a quiet curse in frustration.

“Hey Emmett,” she replied curtly.

_God damnit, he beat me to it again_ , Bella thought – and just like that the courage she’d built up for the confrontation evaporated.

“Fancy meeting you here. I was planning to get my Spanish-homework done before going home,” he explained.

_He’s lying,_ was all Bella thought, _there’s no way he didn’t know I was here_.

But she plastered a neutral but relatively kind smile on her face, and waved the half page of her essay that she had so far managed to scrape up:

“English-paper here.”

“Cool. What are you writing about?”

“An analysis of the theme of guilt and shame from The Scarlet Letter applied on the social cliques of the average American High School.”

“Woah”, Emmet said again sounding impressed, “that sounds badass. Not that I know much about girly high-school cults.”

Bella couldn’t hide her astonishment.

“Wow. That was probably the _bro_ -iest response I’ve ever heard,” she said.

Emmett let out a loud bark of a laugh, and the attending librarian quickly cleared her throat over by her desk to reprimand his outburst.

“Oops,” Emmett shrugged, not looking one ounce regretful, “I guess I’m a total _bro_ then.”

“You are, and that is not an insult I throw around lightly,” Bella responded dryly.

Emmett laughed again; his expression genuinely entertained to Bella. Somehow, she couldn’t keep a smile off her own face no matter how much she wanted to remain stone-faced in front of the stranger-vampire.

She left it at that, not in the mood to banter with him, and returned her focus to her essay. She was supposed to approach him for information, not getting thrown out of the school-library for being too loud and apparently having fun with him. Emmett seemed to turn his attention to his homework as well, but Bella suspected he was only waiting for an opportunity to strike up another conversation.

She was proven correct when out of nowhere Emmet proposes:

“We should hang sometime.”

Bella’s mind came to a screeching halt.

“Excuse me?” she blinked and asked, not sure she had heard him right.

“You’re cool. We should totally be friends,” Emmett explained, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Bella burst out laughing at the bizarre situation, she couldn’t keep it bottled up at the absurd idea of befriending a vampire she knew absolutely nothing about and hang out with him outside of school. She would have been opposed enough to the idea if Emmett had been a human 18-year-old high school bro, but that opposition turned to a big red, all-capped ‘HELL FUCKING NO’ in her head on account of him being a vampire. She couldn’t very well react to his proposal like that though.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, your sister hates me,” she laughed nervously to mask the turmoil she was experiencing.

“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just… difficult with new people. I promise she’s actually nice. But she doesn’t even have to come with.”

“Dude, I can’t even count the amount of times she has glared at me looking like she wants to scoop out my eyeballs or something.”

“I love that. ‘Rose, stop looking at Bella like you’re gonna scoop her eyeballs out!’. She’ll be so annoyed,” Emmett laughed, ”Or I’ll just start calling her ‘Rose the Blinder’.”

“I’m glad that’s funny to you,” Bella muttered, secretly alarmed at the prospect of Rosalie finding out Bella coined the analogy.

“I’m serious though,” Emmett tried again.

“And I’m serious when I say that it’s not a good idea. Besides, my father would board up the windows and doors if he found out I was hanging out alone with a beefy bad boy who looks, well, sort of scary if I’m being honest. He’s a cop, you know.”

A flash of sadness at Bella’s harsh words flitted across Emmett’s face but she couldn’t afford to pay it any mind, she had to look out for herself here. Before he could respond his phone rang. He picked up, and Bella breathed a sigh of relief at getting some reprieve from the tense situation.

“Okay. Yeah. Tell Rose I’ll be home soon. Bye,” Emmett talked into the phone, and then turned his attention to Bella again once he had hung up, “I gotta go. Rose needs some help with her car back home. Talk to you later, Bella.”

Bella mumbled a parting reply, and Emmett left. She was still shocked by his forward proposal and didn’t manage to get much done on her essay before the librarian told her that they were closing.

////

“Hey B,” Emmett greeted her like usual – although the nickname was new – as Bella and her crew was herded by the teachers to stand next to the Cullen-siblings out on the parking lot.

A student in the chemistry-lab had attempted some elaborate Valentine’s Day declaration of love to their partner using one of the Bunsen burners, which had naturally led to something catching fire that wasn’t supposed to. The fire alarm had sounded not long after, and it was policy that the entire building was evacuated in the case of a fire in one of the labs.

Bella had been in the middle of pointedly looking away from Rosalie who had been seated next to her because of a lack of empty chairs in their Physics class when the alarm had sounded. In the corridor she had met up with Angela and Jessica who were coming from their Arts class, and then bumped into Mike and Eric who were coming from Spanish.

Rosalie had quickly left the classroom and moved outside – much to Bella’s immediate relief. Until she noticed that Emmett had joined up with her out on the parking lot and that Bella’s crew were being herded in their direction.

“No,” she said sternly in response to the nickname, and then found herself like a fish out of water as Rosalie turned her sharp eyes on her.

“’B’?” Bella vaguely heard Mike question somewhere behind her and planned to ignore Emmett and turn around back to her friends. Until what he said next:

“Bella and I are friends,” he seemed to explain. To whom Bella wasn’t sure, but probably Rosalie.

He was grinning at her, completely aware of how annoying he was being. Rosalie looked like she was about to have an aneurysm, Bella thought to herself in a slightly detached way, if that hadn’t been impossible for a vampire. She could literally feel how the four sets of her friends’ eyes were burning into the back of her head.

In the eight days since he had dropped the friendship-bomb on Bella in the library and she’d shut him down, Emmett hadn’t stopped ambushing her with high-spirited salutes in a variety of obnoxious ways. This seemed to be his latest effort; Bella sighed.

“That’s not—” she tried, attempting to resolve the situation before turning around to her friends to fumble for an explanation why Emmett was being so weird towards her.

“She’s coming over to hang out this weekend,” Emmett announced abruptly, interrupting Bella.

“She’s absolutely not,” Rosalie said.

“I’m absolutely not,” Bella unwittingly echoed, and Rosalie’s eyes briefly widened in surprise that Bella agreed with her before her usual scowl took over again.

“Guys, of all the things you could have agreed on, why did it have to be this?” Emmett complained loudly, drawing some looks from the other students surrounding them.

Bella heard Jessica frantically whisper something to the rest of their crew behind her, and she sighed at the prospect of having to deal with that next.

“Because it’s a bad idea. We don’t even know each other,” Bella explained tiredly, feeling as if she was explaining something for the 100th time to a five-year old.

Rosalie looked at her with a strange mix of reservation and curiosity. At least it wasn’t open hostility, and Bella would take what she could get.

“I can’t believe you!” Jessica accused once the students had been cleared to enter the building again and resume classes, “Why haven’t you told us you were friends with the Cullens?”

“Because I’m not,” Bella retorted. She knew she would be confronted about the strange interaction between her and the Cullens eventually, she would just have preferred if it wasn’t happening where the Cullens overheard it.

“You totally are,” Jessica argued.

“She totally is,” Mike and Eric repeated.

“Guys give Bella a break. She’s clearly uncomfortable,” Angela said, and Bella practically wanted to turn around and kiss her.

“She’s _totally_ friends with them,” she heard Mike and Eric whisper conspiratorially between themselves and decided to ignore them for the rest of the morning.

“Here’s what I think—” Jessica began.

“Please God, no,” Bella lamented dramatically, which Jessica paid no mind in her quest to explain the strange phenomenon.

“I think he’s into you. He’s like courting you or whatever! Pretty weird if you ask me, but he greets you all the time and looks at you a lot. And I think his sister is jealous. Which is sort of disturbing because they are siblings.”

_Oh, fuck no, she didn’t,_ Bella thought to herself.

Rosalie and Emmett were walking ahead of them with a dozen or so students between them and Bella’s crew, but she saw how Rosalie tensed up at the accusation of being jealous and the insinuation that her and Emmett’s relationship was bordering on incestual.

“Jess, they’re adopted,” Angela supplied, “it’s really not that strange of a concept if they’re together.”

“It’s _weird_ ,” Jessica established.

Bella consolidated herself with the fact that Jessica’s very vocal gossip about the two siblings probably wasn’t the only judgmental opinions they’d overheard about themselves. Because they had no interest in Jessica and the other like-minded people, or the social hierarchy of the school – like they seemingly had with Bella – she hoped that the siblings would at least continue to leave her friend and the rest of her peers alone even if they gossiped and spread stupid rumors about them.

“I think Emmett just has a learning-impairment,” Bella muttered in order to steer away from the crew’s gossiping conversation about the fine details of Rosalie and Emmett’s relationship and whether they were dating or not.

Emmett turned his head to look back at Bella, pulling the corners of his mouth down into a sad grimace. Bella didn’t see or hear the quick snort of laughter that escaped Rosalie.


	10. Friends?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This upload is a bit later than originally planned, sorry!

“We need to talk,” Bella said as soon as she was within distance of Emmett.

These brave words were the first ones spoken to him out of her own initiative. She had spent the previous 24 hours obsessing about why he kept suggesting that they hang out, and why he had cornered her with that suggestion in front of Rosalie and Bella’s friends yesterday morning. He was playing a game with her, she’d decided, and she didn’t like it.

The final class of the day was underway, and she was on her way to the library to finish her US History-paper. It was only lucky – or unlucky perhaps – that Emmett was by his locker, since he hadn’t turned up for when class started for some reason. And as she saw him, she decided to throw caution to the wind – she suspected that Alice would give her a piece of her mind later – and confront him immediately.

She’d given the confrontation some serious thought for the past week; constructing an entire script in her head of what she would say, how she would say it, and where the conversation would take place. Publicly with plenty of witnesses within eyesight but out of earshot to prevent things from going sideways; she would be steadfast in voice and tone; and most importantly she would exaggerate the presence of other vampires in Forks if that issue came up. She couldn’t allow the Cullens to get any leverage on her and Alice or allow them to believe that they could dispose of either of them without serious risk to their own safety or secrets.

“Uh, sure,” Emmett said, confused at Bella’s rigid tone and posture, “lead the way.”

Bella went to the set of tables and chairs furthest inside the school library, closed off enough for them to have a discussion in a normal tone of voice without the librarian throwing them out or being overheard, but still within eyesight of said librarian and the students occupying the tables on the balcony above and across the room. It fell perfectly in line with what she had planned.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it’s gonna stop,” Bella demanded as soon as they were both seated at the table.

She made sure to position herself opposite Emmett, with the large panorama windows of the library hall just behind her. The tall and wide windows began at a mid-thigh height for Bella, so she would at least theoretically be able to quickly climb the ledge in case the shit really hit the fan, and Alice had to come to her rescue. Bella was however reasonably sure that the Cullen-kids wouldn’t cause a scene so publicly – with so many witnesses – but it had been one of Alice’s demands for when Bella was going to go through with the confrontation, and she could absolutely see its merits as a last resort.

“Uh, I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Emmett replied, clearly feigning ignorance.

“I know you know what I’m talking about. Clearly your ‘sister’,” Bella couldn’t keep from air quoting around the last word, “wants nothing to do with me, and yet you keep trying to force whatever this is – this thing you’re trying to mask as a friendship.”

“It _is_ a friendship – or at least I hope it will become one. I want to be friends with you,” Emmett re-iterated, looking at her strangely.

Unbeknownst to Bella he was surprised at the proverbial balls she had; he hadn’t taken her as the confrontational type. Which he was partly correct in assuming. Bella didn’t really like confrontation, but she also recognized when it was necessary and was at those times able to bring forth the mini-Renée that hid somewhere in her personality and put her to use.

“No! Don’t you get that I’m afraid of you? You’re literally pushing yourself at me, and it’s creeping me out.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be intense. It’s just, I’ve never had many friends, so I got a bit excited. You’re cool and I want someone to hang with in this town,” Emmett apologized, looking slightly ashamed.

If he had been human, Bella was convinced that she could have taken the sincerity in his words for what it was – but knowing what kind of creature he really was, she wasn’t swayed by his feigned innocence and sad-teddy-bear jargon.

“Okay, you know what,” Bella said harshly, fed up with his act, “since you seem hellbent of trying to dance around the giant elephant in the room I’m gonna spell it out for you: I know, okay. I _know_. And I know why you want to be friends with me.”

Bella’s relationship with Rosalie – or lack thereof more like – was based entirely on mutual ignoring, and Bella was entirely comfortable with pretending she didn’t exist outside of their shared classes or during lunchbreak in the cafeteria. An approach that Rosalie seemed to share. But Emmett seemed hellbent on cornering her in strange social situations and trying to rope her into hanging out with him, which she was at least 80 percent certain didn’t mean ‘hanging out’ and really meant bloodletting and her death.

“Know what? I’ve already told you why I want us to be friends,” Bella thought to herself that a vampire couldn’t possibly be this dense, that he was clearly laying it on thick to try and fool her – still committed to whatever game he and his ‘sister’ were playing with her.

She’d had enough of the constant paranoia she felt every day, all day since Emmett had begun talking to her some three weeks prior; as if a bloodthirsty predator lurked behind every corner and door at school.

“What you are. There, I said it.”

“Yeah, okay,” the large man shrugged.

“’Yeah’? ‘Okay’?!” Bella couldn’t hide her outrage at Emmett’s carefree response.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say Bella. It was obvious you knew after mine and Rose’s first day here. And it’s not like we’re the only ones here in Forks, right? I don’t see what the problem is,” Emmett explained calmly.

He was much too calm for Bella’s liking, and she had to suck in a breath and count to ten in her head in order not to lash out at him. Things would go much smoother if their discussion was civilized.

“I’m not gonna allow you to get close enough to silence me. I know I’m a loose end, but I am also under the protection of the coven already here,” Bella lied through her teeth, and prayed that Emmett was too distracted to pick up on it - or that he didn’t have some weird, additional ability that could spell the doom of Bella’s plan before it even had time to take off.

“’Silence’ you—” Emmett began to question, but was interrupted:

“Who are they?” Rosalie demanded, suddenly descending on the two seemingly out of nowhere.

Bella jumped, completely unprepared at Rosalie’s appearance. It was almost laughable how out of her depth she suddenly found herself; Rosalie was like a pale and terrifying bolt of thunder, centered on obliterating her in one way or the other.

“Hah, yeah or to ambush me and force information from me. Screw you,” Bella countered and swept her eyes over the two vampires opposite her.

She mustered up all the bravado she could and attempted to get up to leave.

“Sit down,” Rosalie ordered and slammed her hands down on the table in-between them.

So much for civility. Rosalie’s attempt at intimidating her by leaning across the table as far as she could worked, and Bella fell back into her chair. She vaguely noticed some people glancing at the group, curious what all the commotion was about.

“Rose, chill,” Emmett tried.

“The hell I’m going to _‘chill’_ , she clearly knows stuff she’s not supposed to,” Rosalie argued.

“Yeah, but maybe that’s not her own fault,” Emmett pointed out.

Bella leaned back in her chair and released a shaky sigh, the level of alarm she felt steadily dropping with every second that Rosalie and Emmett were busy arguing with each other instead of with her. She was so pumped up on adrenaline that she wasn’t sure she would be able to walk out of the library on steady legs later.

Shakily she managed to pull her phone from her pocket and send Angela a text asking them to meet in the library; she needed an out from the situation. Preferably an out that would come sooner rather than later. She couldn’t risk looking at the phone when she got a muted reply from Angela, in case that would redirect Rosalie’s attention to her.

“’Fault’, _please_. As if some other vampire just randomly walked up to her and shared our existence with her. Just called it a day and left her with that knowledge. She’s a loose end an—"

“It’s like Carlisle said; we don’t have all the facts so we should observe and ask questions,” Emmett countered whilst glancing nervously between Bella and Rosalie – he really didn’t want the human to bolt out of sheer terror.

“Guys…” Bella tried, as she saw the attending librarian look at the trio disapprovingly from across the room.

“’Observe’? Carlisle is much too lax with this! He’s grown too comfortable. I’m not going to risk the Volturi—I’m not going to risk my family’s safety because some human couldn’t keep her mouth shut!”

“Gu—” Bella tried again, still unsuccessful in alerting them that they needed to quiet down.

“Bella has known for at least the five and a half weeks we’ve been here and kept quiet, probably longer than that. I think there’s a lot we don’t know and that she deserves a chance to explain things.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that the situation was a powder keg waiting to blow, Bella would have thanked Emmett for the vote of confidence.

“Guys!” she hollered finally.

“What?!” Rosalie whisper-shouted, irate at the human and the situation she’d been put in when it became apparent that Bella wasn’t the usual unsuspecting human.

“Shut up, the librarian is looking. She’s this close to coming over here and throwing us out,” Bella cautioned – she wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of being forced to leave the haven that the library had suddenly turned into.

“Tell me to shut up _one_ more time,” Rosalie threatened.

“Rose really, shut up,” Emmett supported, realizing that they had drawn enough attention to themselves without being publicly reprimanded by the librarian as well. Rosalie looked like she was about to blow a fuse.

“How’s ten years?” Bella suggested once their silence had warded off the librarian’s attention.

Bella had settled on playing her hand rather aggressively; the Cullens needed to believe that they were in a lower position than they really were, because that seemed like the most effective deterrent for keeping them from attacking her and Alice.

There was no telling what they would do if they figured out that Bella had only known about vampires existing for less than two months, and that she was only protected by a single very tiny one; she would have to bluff her way through the confrontation and pray that neither of the siblings saw through her lies. Her nervously wandering eyes and elevated heartbeat could be easily mistaken as being caused only by the two vampires’ threatening auras’, after all.

“What?” Rosalie and Emmett said in unison.

“I’ve known about your kind for more than ten years,” Bella clarified.

If she could make them believe that she had been under some sort of protection from a vampire coven rivaling the Cullens in size for over a decade, her standing would radically improve. If they had any plans of hurting her or silencing her, they were more likely to rethink if there were tangible consequences to deal with afterwards.

“ _Come on_ ,” Rosalie scoffed, “you’re what – 18?”

“Not yet, still 17.”

Technically, that wasn’t even a lie. She really had been aware of Alice since she was around seven years old, even if she had misconstrued Alice’s presence as something that her imagination had whipped up. Alice had told her that they met for the first time when Bella was five, about to turn six – but Bella couldn’t remember that far back.

“Cool,” Emmett supplied not-so-helpfully, much to Rosalie’s chagrin.

“How?” the blonde vampire demanded.

“I have a… friend that revealed themselves to me after I had turned six years old,” Bella bluffed – it wouldn’t do to reveal that said ‘friend’ was her mate, because she had no idea if that connection could be used against them somehow.

“Let me guess, they’re living here in Forks as well,” Rosalie said dryly, doubting the validity of the human’s statement.

A vampire revealing themselves to a child that young was either sufficiently newly created to not know of the Volturi and their Law, which was unlikely because a young vampire would certainly have killed Bella a long time ago – the human really had a scent like few others, she mused. Or it was an older vampire with enough self-restraint to resist the human’s blood for over a decade, who was clearly arrogant enough to think they could go around the Law as they saw fit. Almost equally unlikely, but not totally unheard of. Not that that would matter once the Volturi unavoidably got wind of this; there was no escaping them in the long run; they knew that much.

“Yeah, and they’re probably somewhere right outside here ready to step in,” Bella said and pointed towards the window behind her.

Rosalie’s eyes widened in surprise and she let out a quiet growl at Bella’s attempt to antagonize her. She couldn’t help herself from quickly scanning the cluster of trees outside the library’s panorama windows, to check for someone watching them.

“You’re not gonna find them unless they want to be found,” Bella supplied.

Emmett rubbed his face – defeated in his quest to try to keep the conversation civil, because he knew how his mate would react to the challenge in what Bella had just said.

“You got that all wrong,” Rosalie said mock-sweetly, “You’re going to tell me, or else.”

“Or else what?” Bella asked, managing to keep her cool even through the clear threat of violence and the alarm bells shrieking in her head only through the knowledge that Angela would hopefully arrive soon and unknowingly rescue her, “You’re gonna snap my neck here in public if I don’t tell you what you want?”

“I might just.”

“Rose,” Emmett intervened, “Calm down.”

“I don’t even know exactly where they are, so it’s not like I could tell you even if I wanted to.”

“Rose, pause. Bella, let’s rewind,” Emmett hurried before Rosalie could reply to Bella and make the situation even worse.

“You guys sure got the whole ‘good cop, bad cop’-routine down. Are you going to try to hurt me if I leave now? Because I can’t find a reason why I should stay for this interrogation.”

“Yes,” Rosalie vowed, incensed and on the verge of losing control of her cool.

“No,” Emmett corrected, “Quiet Rose, you’re scaring her.”

Bella wasn’t scared as much as she was pissed off and tired. She hadn’t signed up for all of this when she had decided to move to Forks. Alice’s reappearance and revelation of being a vampire – with everything that entailed – had been plenty enough for her to deal with.

“That’s the point,” Rose said and sneered at Bella.

“You’re lucky you look like a supermodel, because your personality is shit,” Bella muttered.

She just couldn’t keep the insult to herself in the light of how Rosalie had been harassing her nonstop since she arrived. She regretted it the second she said it – not only was it objectively a terrible thing to say to anyone, but it might as well have been a bucket of gasoline tossed on a raging fire for how Rosalie reacted.

The intimidating female vampire _snarled_ at Bella – much to a few close-by students’ surprise – and Emmett immediately flew up from his chair to position himself between Rosalie and Bella lest his mate flew over the table and ripped Bella’s head off. He had recognized where his hothead of a mate had been heading and been reasonably prepared for it. She was confrontational, brusque, and proud on the verge of being pig-headed – but there were so many other qualities in her that he loved unconditionally. Her tenacity, passion, and loyalty to mention a few.

Bella jerked, her fear spiking and reaching a new high for the duration of the conversation. Because Emmett was standing between Rosalie and the table at which Bella was sitting, she didn’t see much of what was going on. But what she did see legitimately terrified her, and she cursed herself for not keeping her mouth shut in the heat of the moment; Rosalie’s golden eyes had turned black and were glaring dangerously at Bella. Emmett was grasping her upper arms with both of his hands and whispering quietly to her while discreetly shuffling them away from the table and Bella:

“Rose, take a lap and calm down. I’ll take it from here.”

“I swear—” Rosalie growled, and Bella could _feel_ herself shrinking down in her seat under the blonde woman’s glare – dark enough to probably wilt flowers.

“Stop,” Emmett commanded, trying to steer Rosalie away from losing her self-control, trying to prevent a bloodbath in the middle of the library.

“Whatever,” Rosalie forced out behind sharp gritted teeth, throwing one last withering glare at Bella and then whipping around and striding out of the room.

“So… she’s a delight,” Bella said when Rosalie had angrily slammed the library door closed behind her – almost ripping it off the hinges in the process.

“You were riling her up,” Emmett said disapprovingly and looked at Bella as if he was disappointed.

“Nice Emmett. Just sprinkle this shit sundae with some victim-blaming too, why don’t you?”

Emmett released a tired breath; nothing had gone according to plan. He trusted Rosalie and her self-control enough to let her leave by herself, but he didn’t like how Bella had riled her temperament up and seemingly inadvertently played them off against each other. He had taken Bella for the quiet awkward teen that she had seemed like and been woefully unprepared at her confrontational and rash nature. She was very alike to Rosalie in that way.

“Crap. Look I’m sorry about all of that. I told her to stay away, I didn’t know she was coming until it was too late. I really wanted to talk to you about this by myself,” Emmett apologized, much to Bella’s relief.

“So, what now?” she asked.

“Can we reboot the whole thing?”

“The interrogation? Sure, why not.”

“It’s not an interrogation.”

“Whatever you say,” Bella relinquished.

“I really wanted to be friends with you, I wasn’t lying about that. And it’s not code for wanting to silence you.”

“And you expect me to believe that?” Bella said, leaning back in her chair – hopeful that she was radiating a calm and composed aura whilst obsessing over where the fuck Angela was.

“How big is the coven that is already here?” Emmett opted to ask.

“See, you’re just proving my point. Why should I tell you that?”

“It would help my family and I figure out what to do.”

“Help you figure out if you can take them out so you can have Forks to yourselves, you mean?”

“What—no. We’re not…” the human was surely being difficult on purpose by lashing out with her predetermined accusations, and Emmett sighed, “Look, things got complicated now. But my family and I want to solve this peacefully.”

“Said every aggressor in every conflict ever,” Bella mused humorlessly.

“Bella, I get that you are riled up and scared, and upset, but can you tone down the sass? I’m trying to talk to you, and I feel like I’m debating a 13-year old,” Emmett said tiredly, any semblance of his casual smile and friendliness falling away.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Emmett chuckled and smiled cheekily at her again, trying to get back in his usual carefree mood to take some of the tension away from their conversation – and giving the human opposite him whiplash.

“You’re not going to get many answers out of me, because I don’t know a whole lot of the details, and the things I know I’m reluctant to share because I don’t trust you. So, I think _you_ can begin by explaining what your ‘family’ is doing here and what the hell is going on.”

“We moved here because my father got a job offer from the hospital, I already told you that. We live among humans because we want to, makes life a little more interesting. My mother consults as an architect, and me and Rosalie attend high school like… well, like human kids.”

Bella wanted to laugh at how absurd the Cullen’s – a coven of _vampires’_ – roleplay of a typical upper-middleclass American family was. It could have been a skit on Saturday Night Live.

“Because it makes things easier?” Bella asked, referring to the easy access to blood that the Cullen-patriarch’s employment at the local hospital would afford them.

“What do you mean?”

“Uh, easier access to, you know, _blood_?” she whispered conspiratorially.

“Bella, how much do you actually know about us?” Emmett asked, looking confused.

“Enough, I’d say.”

“We – or more like Carlisle, my father – suspected that the coven already here and the vampire we could smell on you was… experienced, based on how you’re still alive and how they’ve steered clear of us for six weeks. That they told you about us.”

“Why is that?”

“Because my family is sort of infamous. We figured that the reason you knew about us from day one was because of… personal experience with vampires like us?”

“No, I just—well, I mean, I know _of_ your kind, I had a hunch from when I bumped into you in the cafeteria and my friend confirmed it later. But not about you guys personally, why should I?”

“Because Carlisle is well-known in our society,” Bella furrowed her brow at that; Alice had told her that her kind didn’t even have a society in the first place, that they were decentralized and didn’t even particularly like each other, “Because we don’t drink human blood. At first, we thought we were dealing with a coven that was just passing through, that they didn’t think it worth the hassle of approaching us, that they didn’t consider us a threat.”

“Uh, what—” Bella began, but a bright and happy voice completely contrasting with the bleak serious matter she and Emmett were discussing interrupted her:

“There you are Bella!” Angela laughed, “I’ve seriously looked all over the library for you. What did you need help with?”

Emmett’s mouth settled into a straight line at the interruption; his and Bella’s conversation was explicably over – just when he felt like it had been going somewhere worthwhile after all of Rosalie’s dramatics.

“Hey Ang. I wanted your opinion on my US History-paper, but Emmett has already helped me out,” Bella lied and flicked a stack of random papers on the table, “and I figured you and I could go for a coffee in town when class is over.”

“That sounds fun! Class is over in like 15 minutes anyways,” Angela accepted.

“Well, nice paper. I hope you pass well,” Emmett played along, “I should go. Talk to you later, Bella.”

Angela wanted to offer for him to stay, kind and including as she was, but Emmett hurried to leave before she could muster up the courage.

“When did you become friends with Emmett Cullen?” she curiously asked Bella when she thought that Emmett was out of earshot.

“I don’t know,” Bella replied, truthfully conflicted about her feelings towards him and a possible… she was hesitant to call it a ‘friendship’, but at the very least civility and a truce in light of everything that had just been discussed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did Bella just draw upon herself the wrath of Rosalie?  
> (Yes, she did) >:D


	11. Getting closer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to take a moment to explain something, provide a little bit of context.  
> After the upload of Chapter 10, I received a rather rude comment. Veiled, to some extent, and I responded in kind – albeit less veiled. Which I’m sure is quite clear if you read the comment in question.  
> I absolutely LOVE how many of you are commenting on this story (both new and regular readers), and I love engaging with you in the comments. I’ve specifically asked that if you have some constructive criticism to share, by all means do. I want to improve my writing, and if you’ve taken the time to provide me with thoughtful suggestions, you most certainly have helped me do that. 
> 
> Now, onwards we go – happy reading!  
> (And sorry for the late upload – again!)

“What were you thinking?!” a bright voice demanded. Surprising absolutely no one, Alice was livid.

Bella had expected this; Alice had voiced her disapproval of her plan in varying degrees whenever she’d decided to bring it up in the past weeks. And going ahead with her plan regardless – and almost entirely on a hunch – was bound to get a rise out of the vampire.

Still, the groaning of her truck’s suspension as Alice descended on her with enough ferocity to touch its rear wheelhouse and send the orange-red behemoth wobbling sideways caused momentary alarm.

“Well—” she began, already knowing that she was going to be interrupted before she could get more than a syllable of an excuse out.

“I was _this_ close—Do you understand what could have happened, Bella?!”

“Look, I didn’t exactly plan for the sociopathic blonde to crash the whole thing.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that Alice was a vampire – very deadly and very superhuman – Bella would have laughed out loud at her gritted teeth and angry grimace; ‘absolutely lethal’ rhymed badly with the sight of someone just under five feet tall who probably weighed less than a hundred pounds.

“…I mean, I sort of accomplished something?” Bella tried when Alice seemed unwilling or unable to form a reply, “Alice. It was driving me _insane_ , walking around school just, I dunno, thinking I was in more or less constant danger. I felt freaking _raw_ , okay? I had to do something about it!”

Alice growled, “I have never met anyone more prone to life-threatening idiocy.”

“Is that a compliment?”

Alice’s nostrils flared in irritation and she suddenly moved away in a blur; Bella saw her deftly climb the tree at the side of the house whose branch extended almost to her bedroom window and disappear inside.

Then, the young woman noticed Charlie looking out the kitchen window, directly at her – probably having heard her pull up on the driveway and wondering why she wasn’t coming inside.

_I hope Alice moved away in time… I so don’t have time for another inquisition._

“Is the truck acting up or something?” Charlie asked when Bella finally made her way inside, trying to gauge the reason for why his daughter had just stood and stared ahead of herself on their driveway.

“Nah. I mean, the ignition is a bit… tired? But it’s been like that since I got it.”

“Yeah, it’s an old truck. But I can probably have someone take a look at it next week.”

Charlie contemplated pushing ahead and asking Bella if there was something going on that he should know, but the thought of coming across as overbearing stressed him out. His daughter was independent – if everything that happened in Phoenix was anything to go by – and he knew she’d just find his overprotectiveness and nosiness annoying. But maybe…

“Thanks Dad. Only if it’s not too much of a hassle. I… uh, I got some homework I need to do. Should probably get to it,” Bella mumbled, gesturing vaguely with her hands.

Oh yeah, the nervousness radiating off his daughter had Charlie absolutely convinced that there was something she wasn’t telling him.

“Yeah okay. I was busy in the garage before you came. You’ll be done before dinner, or should I just order us something?”

“No, I’ll cook something up. Talk to you later!”

Bella was eager to resume her conversation with Alice, and quietly shook off her shoes and jacket and hurried upstairs.

“So, how much of the interrogation did you catch? At school, I mean,” she asked as soon as her door had closed behind her. Homework dumped on her desk, Bella turned around only to find Alice standing less than a foot behind her, vibrant eyes scanning her alertly.

“Most of it, but the woman came outside after he made her leave and I had to keep out of the way. I didn’t want to risk getting into a fight and leave you unsupervised. She ran west, into those forest plantations half a mile from your school,” the vampire replied.

“Did you hear what he said about their diet?”

“No, I was too far away by then.”

“He said that they don’t drink human blood.”

Bella went and sat down on the edge of her bed, reflexively trying to put some distance between herself and Alice’s attentive stare. She was still as puzzled by Emmett’s statement now as she had been an hour and a half earlier.

“That’s impossible,” Alice said, knitting her brows and absentmindedly flipping through some of Bella’s homework, trying to figure out what the male vampire named Emmett must have meant instead.

“It’s what he said,” the human shrugged.

“That’s… how would they resist the urge?” Alice asked more to herself than to Bella.

“So, you’ve never heard of anything like it? Or of them? He said that his, uh, _father_ is well-known – someone named Carlisle?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Apparently, their family is infamous – whatever that means. I’m not sure, but maybe Emmett meant because of their dietary… choice? He was really into the whole ‘family’-thing, too.”

“I’ve never heard of them, or of any vampire abstaining from human blood. At least not for longer periods of time. The… thirst, eventually it drives you insane. You completely lose track of yourself until you satiate it. Did Emmett say how old this Carlisle is?”

“No, he didn’t. Just that he was old. He didn’t have time to explain because Angela interrupted us.”

“I saw how you sent a message to your friend once the female showed up. That was resourceful of you,” Alice said and joined her human on the bed.

“Yeah well, she freaks me out. Figured I’d need an exit. Honestly, she’s way more of a stereotypical vampire than you are.”

“Thanks,” Alice laughed sarcastically.

“But what can it be? It doesn’t make sense that they starve themselves, right?” Bella theorized, bringing them back to this new mystery, “If it’s like you say and they’d be driven mad if they abstained for too long? They must substitute it for something. You’re sure that your kind can’t digest human food and drink?”

“I can’t. Nor any other vampire I’ve met.”

“So, it’s like, what, animal blood?” Bella suggested off-handedly. Alice’s widened eyes brought an abrupt stop to her disbelieving laughter.

“It’s… but no, I don’t see how I wouldn’t know about that. It’s _wrong_ …”

“What is?”

“Their smell. It’s unappealing. Humans smell very appealing to us – and some are entirely irresistible. With animals it’s like… smelling the sole of a boot. Wouldn’t they smell appetizing if their blood could sustain us?”

“I’m probably the last person who would know this,” Bella supplied unhelpfully.

“I should try it,” Alice added quietly, seemingly to herself.

“Wait! What if it’s a trap?” Bella asked in a hurry as Alice sprung up from the bed, her reflexes too slow to catch the tiny vampire around her waist.

“A trap how?”

“Like what if you get sick or something?”

“Don’t worry, Bella, my kind don’t get sick.”

“But you can’t know right?” the human pressed on, anxiously biting her lip.

Alice turned around and approached her again, “I’ll consult my visions, okay?” and carefully put her hand on Bella’s shoulder to give it a light squeeze; Bella being worried about her like this made her feel all sorts of things.

“You’re going now?”

In the light of her school day, Bella felt even more unsafe without Alice than she usually did. Since the Cullens came to town they hadn’t spent much time apart, except for when Bella was at school – where Alice couldn’t follow – some occasions where she hung out with her human friends on the weekends, or the few times Alice went out herself.

Bella – despite being the prime-example of an introvert – had gotten used to the notion of never truly being alone, but now that she wasn’t guaranteed Alice’s safe and sound return the thought of her leaving caused legitimate fear.

“I was planning to, yes.”

Alice was eager to prove or disprove their theory and give her something to go on regarding the rivalling vampires. Besides, she hadn’t fed in just over two weeks – it was time to get to it, so that she could continue to safely spend time with her human.

She’d keep a rigorous focus on her visions, so that she would know beforehand if any of the rivaling vampires decided to come for Bella – but at this point she doubted it. The blonde one was unpredictable, sure, but Emmett had seemed genuine enough in his intent to at least _not_ kill Bella. And it was now as clear as ever that they acted as a unit; she wouldn’t act out – that was something a young vampire would do, and none of the Cullens seemed young or inexperienced. They would bide their time.

And, she knew she would need to leave to hunt at some point anyway.

No matter Bella’s skyrocketing anxiety at the thought of being without Alice right now, she was reluctant to vocally state her wants. How would she even begin to explain that she just wanted to curl up in the vampire’s safe and solid embrace in the light of her wild afternoon with Emmett and Rosalie?

_Don’t make it awkward_ , she thought to herself and kept her mouth shut.

To her, it was a whole other thing when Alice – without fail these days – settled into her space after she came home from school, leaned down next to her on the bed when she needed to read something from her AP English syllabus. Or when either one of them held the other at night. The nightly cuddles were usually initiated by Bella, but everything else was per Alice’s initiative – not that she tended to complain.

The vampire initiating contact with her meant that Bella didn’t need to ask pathetic awkward questions or vocalize her thoughts – and maybe also give away her strange, budding feelings – it was _safe_. She wasn’t sure how to explain or admit to herself why she’d grown to want physical contact with Alice, just like Alice had made it clear she wanted physical contact with her.

“I’ll only be an hour or two Bella. And I have this mobile _phone_ with me, so you can reach me,” Alice assured the human. Something in her eyes told Bella that she knew what her mate had been on the verge of asking.

Alice had been gone for just over half an hour when Bella’s phone chimed. Thinking it was a picture from Alice she hurried to grab it.

The tiny vampire had been dumbstruck by the fact that everyone in 2019 carried around thin and sleek state-of-the-art cameras that _doubled as telephones_. Because of the distance she’d kept from human society since the decade following her transformation, she’d only encountered the bulky cameras of the late 1920’s in person – and of those she had no practical experience. But they’d looked to be a hassle to carry around and in relation to these modern cameras they certainly hadn’t captured such quality photos.

Alice had used the camera on the phone she’d been given by Bella about a month back to send or show the human a handful of seemingly random pictures followed by questions on what the photographed object’s intended purpose was. It was disturbingly cute to Bella.

Then there was another ping and a third and fourth before she could even reach her phone.

“What is she up to…?” she muttered to herself before picking it up:

**> > Where are you?**

**> > At school?**

**> > Nvm.**

**> > I’m coming over.**

It took Bella a few seconds to connect the dots; at first, she thought it was someone who texted the wrong number. She scrolled up past the messages and realized that it was Leah who texted her judging by previous messages, she hadn’t added her childhood friend’s number to her contacts.

Before she could type up a reply the same number called.

“Uh, hello?” Bella answered.

“Where are you?” Leah’s voice barked out.

“’Hey Bella, what are you up to?’” Bella imitated Leah’s voice as best she could.

“You at home?” Leah ignored her.

“Dude, you’re being sort of intense.”

“Can you tell me if you’re home or not?”

“Uh, uh, yeah I am. What’s up? Has something happened?” Leah’s sharp and insistent tone began worrying Bella that something bad had happened.

“Alone?”

“Yeah,” Bella said – not technically lying.

“I’m coming over.”

“Wait! What do you mean you’re coming over? I… I have plans,” Bella grabbed for an excuse. Alice could be back in less than 30 minutes, and something told Bella that it wasn’t a good idea to show her pale, red-eyed and decidedly superhuman friend to Leah.

“You’re gonna have to postpone them then,” Leah stated, and Bella could tell that she was about to end the call by the finality in her tone.

“Wait wait!” Bella called out again.

“What?” Leah asked, her irritation coming through loud and clear.

“I was going into town for groceries. Meet me there,” Bella instructed. Leah seemed to take a moment, then huffed an affirmative noise and hung up the call.

Bella was confused as to what had gotten Leah so riled up and irritated that she had practically forced her visit on the younger woman. What could it possibly be that was so pressing that it couldn’t be taken over the phone? She quickly threw on a clean hoodie and ran downstairs.

“Bella?” Charlie questioned and the hurried thudding down the stairs – she’d said she had homework, and it was a bit too early for dinner still.

“I’m gonna go buy some groceries, anything we need?”

“Oh thanks. We’re low on milk and eggs, but other than that I’m okay. Just don’t, ya’ know, buy anything too exotic. I’m a man of habit.”

A badly veiled dig at Bella’s recent attempt to get him to try a chicken tikka masala she cooked. The chicken had gone down fine – after Charlie had scraped off most of the sauce from it. As did the ‘untainted rice’, as he’d put it. But the spices and sauce hadn’t been his thing, and Bella still hadn’t heard the end of it.

She did most of the cooking in the Swan household. If Charlie was left responsible for that part of day-to-day householding Bella wouldn’t get to eat much else than pizza, TV-dinners, or take-away from the town diner. With the responsibility of cooking came much of the grocery shopping too, but Charlie paid for all their expenses, and did dishes and basic cleaning everywhere except Bella’s room. They shared responsibility of keeping the bathroom tidy, and they each took care of their own laundry. Bella found it a fair division of household-chores.

“Okay, you bore. I promise I’ll only buy things that your poor, sensory-deprived palate is accustomed to,” Bella promised sarcastically. Charlie just gave a gruff grumble in reply from where he was sprawled on the couch after a busy workday.

“I’m meeting Leah in town though, so I’ll be gone for an hour. She wanted to meet and talk.”

“Just… “ Charlie sighed, “be careful, Bells,” he hated having to advise her to be careful around one of his closest friend’s daughter, but he truthfully didn’t trust Leah ever since the stunt she’d pulled two months ago, during the Christmas Eve-dinner at Billy Black’s place.

“Yeah. Bye!”

Bella hurried out to her car, jumped in and turned the ignition. The outside wasn’t overly cold, but it wasn’t warm either and her trusty mountain of metal struggled a bit before it got going. She spent a fleeting thought on Alice and decided to send a text saying she was away on an errand and to just hang in her room until she came back.

////

Bella came out from the store carrying a bag of groceries, to the sight of Leah Clearwater leaning against her car out on the parking lot. The older woman was dressed in a loose sporty t-shirt and three-quarter shorts, and Bella shivered in horror at how cold it must be. Why the heck was she dressed as if it was summer?

“You need some help with that?” Leah asked when Bella started fumbling for the car keys in the pocket of her hoodie.

“Yes please,” Bella accepted, and eyed Leah as she came closer.

Leah helped her put the bag on the floor of the passenger seat and climbed in afterwards. Bella got in on the driver’s side but made no attempt to start the car. She figured whatever they were going to talk about was going to be serious judging by Leah’s voice on the phone and the tension practically oozing off her now.

“So, what’s up?” Bella asked hesitantly.

“Who do you hang out with here in town?”

“Uhm…” Bella wasn’t at all prepared for that question.

“At school and outside,” Leah clarified.

“Why do you wanna know?” Bella questioned.

“Because I do.”

“Well you’re not my mom, so you can’t expect me to just tell you everything on demand. Honestly you’ve been acting hella weird since I came back and I’m beginning to wonder if you’re even my friend anymore.”

Leah winced, but Bella couldn’t find it in herself to take back her words. She spoke the truth; Leah had acted so strangely aggressive since Bella came to Forks that she wondered if something had happened to her childhood-friend, or if she had just been blind to her older friend’s attitude when she was younger. She couldn’t remember Leah ever being so volatile when they were kids.

“Look Bella,” Leah sighed, “there’s some stuff going on around here…”

_Don’t I know it,_ Bella mused sarcastically in her own head.

“…and my question really has to do with the safety of the people living here.”

“What do you mean? Are you involved in something… criminal or something?” Bella couldn’t be sure that Leah was talking about what was going through her own mind, and it was best to keep her wording innocent.

“It’s… complicated. But there might be people in this town that are dangerous, that you should stay away from.”

Charlie had given Bella the basic people-and-places-in-Forks-to-stay-away-from speech a couple of days after she’d moved in, and the people or places on that list could be counted on one hand. And none of the entries on the list were people or places that Bella would casually stumble upon. Forks was a rather peaceful town; there were some incidents at times, but nothing organized or overly dangerous going on that Charlie or any other cop in town knew about.

“What? Leah, I swear if you’re talking about a gang, or if you’re like in one I’m gonna be pretty pissed at you,” Bella warned.

“Can you just tell me who you’ve been around since you came here,” Leah asked again, clearly riled up about _something_ judging by how she was holding the handle on the passenger-side door in a white-knuckled grip.

“You’re being weird,” Bella said, but decided to placate her intense friend as well as she could, “but fine. I hang with some kids in my year at school. Angela Weber, Jessica Stanley, Mike Newton, and Eric Yorkie. Sometimes on the weekends. We’re all sort of nerdy – well, except for Jessica maybe – so there’s no way any of them are into anything criminal or whatever. And if they were, I’m pretty sure Charlie would know or would have told me. He’s grown up with many of their parents.”

“Hmm, yeah I know of the Weber-girl. Her family is involved in the church, yes? I think I know her from when we were kids and my mom took me to the yard-sales they would set up here during the summer. Haven’t really met the others though. They’re from Forks?”

“Well, Jessica moved here in like third grade. But otherwise, yeah.”

Leah didn’t seem entirely satisfied with Bella’s answer; her knitted eyebrows signaled that she was frustrated or concentrating very hard on something, and Bella was hesitant to trigger some volatile episode in her again. It was aggravating how Leah was so adamant on apparently mapping out her entire social life, and how she was dancing around what she really wanted to ask. Obviously, she didn’t believe Bella was being honest when she gave her answers – she was like a freaking bloodhound, and the younger woman just wanted to go back home. To Alice.

_Can’t let her know about Alice,_ Bella thought to herself, fighting to keep her poker-face in place.

“What?” she asked confrontationally when Leah had looked at her for about half a minute without saying anything.

“No one else? Maybe someone who moved here since you spent your last summer here?”

“Leah, are you talking about the Cullens? I thought we went over them at the diner weeks ago. And why didn’t you just ask what you wanted to from the start?”

“They’re… trouble. But I’m not talking about them, no. Although, do you talk to them? Hang in school?”

“The blonde one hates me with a burning passion.”

“I see…” Leah mumbled and broke her intense eye-contact with Bella to look down in her own lap.

“The guy is… I dunno. Friendly enough. Sort of weird. We’ve talked a couple of times.”

Leah glanced up again and she looked almost a little regretful to Bella; as if she suddenly realized that she’d started the conversation she’d shoehorned Bella into at the wrong end. The older woman’s pondering was interrupted by her stiffening and whipping her head towards the parking lot and the shadowy backside of the grocery-store. Bella subconsciously mimicked her as she did – never fully relaxed around the powder keg that her childhood-friend was these days – and tracked her gaze. In the darkness of the evening she only saw a beat-up old delivery van parked on the side of the unlit path leading to the store’s loading bay; she saw nothing remarkable there.

“They are a lot more trouble than they seem Bella,” Leah said then and looked back from the window – and like that Bella was sure that Leah knew something about the Cullens that she shouldn’t.

For someone clueless of what they really were they seemed like a rather typical family; wealthy, sure, and possibly a little intimidating on account of their high social status what with the father being a doctor and the mother a successful consulting architect, but they didn’t look or feel criminal. Maybe a bit isolationist and peculiar, but certainly not malevolent. But what Leah said – or rather, _how_ she said it – hinted that the older woman had seen past the ordinary façade that the Cullens had painted themselves with. Whether she knew that they were harboring a massive secret or if she already knew what that secret was, Bella couldn’t be sure of yet.

She had a moment of moral panic, completely split on what she should do. The morally right thing to do would be to warn Leah of what she risked by poking around the Cullens, and by doing so revealing that she also knew something she shouldn’t about them. But what if Leah wasn’t actually talking about what Bella thought? Then she might accidentally share too much information, and that could lead to very bad things on its own. Namely that both or either of them was hurt or killed for knowing the family’s secret.

“Are you even listening to me?” Leah asked with a scowl on her face.

“Of course,” Bella lied.

“Right. I said that there are other people they might be associated with that are dangerous as well. People who might recently have arrived here, maybe guests of theirs or something like that.”

“Why are you even wrapped up in this? You make it sound like they are running an organized crime-family! If it’s as bad as you make it sound wouldn’t it be a police-matter?”

Bella really hoped it _wouldn’t_ be turned over to the police, because that would mean Charlie would get dragged into it and there was no telling what sort of danger he could encounter, what with vampires running about in the town, but she had to act her part of clueless civilian. And poking at the subject and Leah’s dancing around the issue might make her inadvertently reveal something that could help Bella figure out what she knew about the Cullens.

“They have a bad history with the Rez. And since I’m the oldest child of a tribe councilman I’m brought up to speed for when I will inherit one of the positions from my parents.”

_There._

Leah had inadvertently given something away. The Cullens couldn’t possibly have history with the Reservation if they moved here not even two months ago. Leah had been weird about them since the first day of the new semester when the siblings of the coven had enrolled at Forks High – when she realistically couldn’t have met them in town or been around them enough to form an opinion of them as individuals. It was entirely possible that the Cullens – or other vampires looking like them might have been in or around Forks before – but she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant yet. That the Quileute-tribe council knew of vampires, that Leah knew or that the entire Reservation knew? Or just that they knew of something strange or supernatural?

“What does that mean?” Bella asked.

“I can’t really share the details, it’s secret tribe-stuff. I don’t even know most of it yet. But really Bella, you should stay away from them. And anyone associating with them, for your own safety.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Bella said, deciding to do the exact opposite and investigate things further when she had time, “Do you need a ride anywhere, where did you park?” she then asked, to wrap up the conversation. She had groceries that needed to get home and whip up into a dinner after all.

“Nah it’s cool,” Leah avoided the question, “You go home with your groceries, I’ll call someone from the Rez to pick me up.”

Leah said goodbye and left the car. Bella looked after her as she walked towards the back of the grocery-store apparently talking to someone on her phone. When she was out of sight Bella started her car and drove home.

She decided to make a basic chicken pie when she came home and whipped up some batter; that wouldn’t get her any complaints from Charlie, and she could go up to her room and check on Alice while it cooked.


	12. Too close!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lil’ quicker update this time around, I figured I’d close July off with one!  
> From now on I will only update once every 2 weeks – meaning the next update will be around mid-August. I want to make sure that I have time to finish the story before we catch up to the final chapters, and real life is also looming on the horizon now with school and other responsibilities.  
> Chapters will also be a little bit shorter from here on out (around 4k words instead of 6-7k)! 😊

“Hey. Did you get back long ago?” Bella asked quietly as she opened the door to her room and found Alice standing next to her bed. She walked up behind her.

“No, just a few minutes ago,” came Alice’s reply. Her voice was strangely soft in Bella’s ears.

“Did it go well?”

“Come here,” Alice replied instead of answering Bella’s question, and turned around to fully face her. Before Bella had much time to react Alice pulled her close.

“Woah!” Bella let out at the surprising movement, “Hey! Wait, your eyes…”

It wasn’t Alice’s usual crimson eyes that were peering up at her. They were the same size and shape as usual, adorning the same beautiful face, but they were a much crisper red-orange color. Like the pulp of a red grapefruit – solidly red throughout but with a deep orange blasted into the very core of its deliciously bitter flesh. Bella couldn’t help but stare; this new juxtaposition gave them an almost… _wild_ gleam.

“What about them?” Alice asked, her voice still strangely soft and muted, as if she was a bit distant.

“They’re not, uh…” Bella began, but trailed off as Alice’s arms snaked around her waist and grabbed the fabric of her hoodie.

Bella’s pulse sped up at Alice’s closeness; she had already had a very intense and confusing day and afternoon, and she hadn’t at all expected Alice to be in a cuddly mood. That in itself wasn’t strange; they had cuddled dozens of times when Bella was a kid and had needed closeness or comfort, and they’d cuddled after Alice came back into her life. They had even cuddled after she had revealed that she was a vampire. Since the Cullens had come to town there had been decidedly less of it though, even if it still happened. Or rather, it was less soft these days.

Bella had hoped – and some part of her even longed – for things to go back to the way she was used to where they could just cuddle and talk and banter like usual. What Alice was doing wasn’t exactly that – she had never been so forward about it – but at least it was better than her being constantly on edge.

“I want to have you close…” Alice said quietly – almost too quietly for Bella to hear. The short vampire stepped back to sit on the bed, pulling Bella along by her hand.

Bella was still transfixed by Alice’s unusual eye color. The red, she’d gotten used to, those she _knew_ – even the very clear and vivid red that probably meant that Alice had recently consumed blood. And on the other side of the spectrum, these past few weeks had made her used to the Cullens’ bright golden eyes, even if the reason for them being that color was still a mystery.

But this new color…? Deviant enough from the familiar red to be noticeable, they were still a faraway shot from that rich golden shade.

“They sort of remind me of the Cull—” Bella began to explain, but a quiet growl from behind interrupted her:

“Don’t speak of them,” Alice said lowly, her voice dark.

She was suddenly pulled into Alice’s lap, and a squeak escaped her mouth at her mate’s eccentric behavior. The vampire’s scent was all around her; pine and crisp creek water. She’d grown so used to it that she barely reflected on it these days, but now it was all around her – unexpectedly much more noticeable. And there was something else, too… something mustier, sharper – like moss – emanating from her mate’s clothes.

Bella flowed easily with the movement as one of Alice’s arms migrated from its embrace around her stomach to circling around her shoulders, practically molding the human’s back against her own body. Her breathing suddenly felt labored and her mouth had gone strangely dry, and why did Alice’s frame feel so pleasant wrapped around her?

Alice leaned down into her neck from behind and inhaled deeply, and despite how some rational part of Bella realized that she should put some distance between herself and her mate, she didn’t. Accompanied by a strangely tingling sensation running all over her skin – goosebumps and something else – her heart was thundering away in her ribcage. She couldn’t seem to recall how exactly she’d so easily ended up in Alice’s lap or why – but then again, that didn’t feel particularly important to figure out right now.

“Alice…” she uttered quietly. She furrowed her brow at the urgent whisper she’d released, distantly understanding how weird it was of her to so abruptly call her mate’s name like that – with such a… _passionate_ undertone.

“Bella…” Alice said back in-between deep inhalations of Bella’s concentrated scent. Through the thin skin on the side of Bella’s neck she could smell every component of what made Bella’s blood so unique and mouthwatering – unlike how much of her true scent was usually masked behind detergent, soap and fabric, or by other smells.

The arm across Bella’s collarbone tightened perceptively, a small and dainty right hand tightening its grip on her left shoulder. Without conscious thought she slumped her neck and leaned her face down towards said hand holding her upper body almost entirely still and slowly touched her lips to the cold skin.

Alice pulled her nose away from Bella’s pulse point – her head swimming with a combination of Bella’s scent, her warmth, and hunger left unstilled by unsatisfying animal blood. Her mouth fell open – a moan wavering in the back of her throat, barely held back. Her teeth ached—no, her _teeth_ didn’t ache, that was impossible, her whole _being_ ached – to bite down into the flushed and hot skin of the neck just inches away from her.

And she was dangerously without control of that baser urge.

But, as Bella leaned down and placed a kiss on her hand however, something snapped back inside Alice’s mind; the figurative hand of her bloodlust that was pulling and stretching the rubber band of her self-control almost to its breaking point slipped and this band snapped back into place.

“ _No!_ ” she snarled, and with power unchecked flung Bella to the side and launched herself off the bed. With a noisy crash she landed into the bookshelf next to Bella’s desk, snapping two of the shelves clean through the middle and sending books tumbling down on the floor.

“Bella! What was that, what’s going on?!” Charlie called from downstairs, alarmed from having been woken up from half-slumber by the loud crash. Scared half senseless he rushed up to the stairs in full cop-mode.

Alice glanced quickly at Bella with panic written all over her face, before her movements turned into a blur. She righted herself to a standing position and pulled the bookshelf completely down on the floor to make it easier for Bella to lie that it had simply tipped over, and not having been smashed into by a blood-crazed vampire. Bella’s father was rapidly ascending the stairs and would fling the door open in just a few seconds.

As she fled Bella’s room through the window, she heard Bella quietly call for her to wait up, but she absolutely couldn’t do that. It would put her at risk of being seen by Charlie, or worse, assault Bella again. Right now, she had to get as far away from the human as she could.

“What was—Shit! What in all hell is going on?” Charlie exclaimed as he threw Bella’s door open to find her slumped against the side of her bed barely recovered from being flung off Alice like a pillow.

“I-I dunno! I was, uh, I was napping. Just woke—jerked off the bed—t-the bookshelf must have—" she hurried out, desperately trying to explain the chaotic mess Charlie just found her in.

“That’s not possible, I made sure to screw it to the wall to be safe…” her father pointed out and walked over to the mess of books and broken shelves on the floor. With a heave he pulled up the frame of the bookshelf and pushed it back into place. It groaned and wobbled, now unbalanced and beyond repair.

“Well I don’t know! Maybe it, uh, broke? Or this house is haunted, because I haven’t been near the bookshelf all day,” Bella argued.

“The backboard is barely holding together… I suppose it’s _possible_ that the screws lost their grip and it just couldn’t hold the weight of all your books… Just, hmm, strange…” The police-chief muttered and inspected the broken piece of furniture with a critical eye such that it could have been a piece of evidence at an active crime-scene.

Bella breathed a quiet sigh of relief at how he seemed to buy the last-second lie, despite its unlikeliness. The alarm on her phone suddenly rang out, making both Swans jump from fright. The pie Bella had put in the oven was ready.

“Come on, Bells. Let’s go eat. I’ll get you a new bookshelf next week,” Charlie said and blew out a harrowed breath as the adrenaline was leaving his system, “I just don’t get how this happened…”

Bella quietly followed her father downstairs for a calm Friday-dinner, successfully keeping up appearances.

Before she dug into the chicken pie she’d made for dinner, she absentmindedly wetted her lips – the lips she’d _kissed Alice’s hand with_ – and thought about how she just needed to get through dinner with her father before she could freak out in the privacy of her room.

////

**> > Where are you?**

Bella wrote to Alice’s phone when she didn’t come back that evening. After some tossing and turning, she eventually fell asleep. It was fitful and plagued by strange dreams of Alice looking at her as if she was a delicious three-course meal, or of other random people – sometimes Rosalie, Emmett, or even Leah – demonized, fiery-eyed horror-amalgamations with claws and fangs and horns observing Bella from above, as if she was an interesting specimen trapped in a terrarium.

When she woke up early on Saturday morning and still hadn’t gotten a reply from Alice – she now knew that Alice didn’t sleep – and the vampire had probably seen what she’d decided to send her from the start and still ignored the message. She sent another text, not really knowing what to actually _say_ :

**> > Alice?**

Minutes, hours and eventually the whole day passed, with Bella mostly laying in her bed replaying what exactly had happened Friday afternoon. She wasn’t entirely sure – because she hadn’t _seen_ what Alice had been up to behind her – but she supposed that her vampire mate had been thirsting for her blood. It was the most logical explanation.

She didn’t know exactly why or how that had happened; close proximity to Bella and her scent had never been a problem like that before, that she could remember at least. At least, Alice had never voiced anything like that out loud.

_Maybe it’s actually **really** hard for her to be around me…?_ Bella thought to herself, guilt nibbling away at her.

She wasn’t sure just how close Alice had been to fall for the temptation and bite her, and she didn’t want to think about that part because it meant that she might have to reevaluate just how much she should trust Alice.

Shuddering from the uncomfortable train of thought, Bella proceeded to move on and focus her pondering on why she had been so calm. And why Alice’s scent had been so strong. And why she had felt so tingly and warm. With mounting horror, the thought that she might have been excited dawned on her and she almost recoiled from the tsunami of anxiety that washed over her.

Excited from the closeness of another body, from her mate—

**_Alice._ **

—being close, touching her? She was 17 after all – a _teenager_ – it wouldn’t be completely _unheard of_ if she’d just been… well, horny. Turned on by another body. In that weirdly hormonal, way-too-stressful, teenager-way.

_S-sexually…? Ugh, get a freaking grip, Bella._

The prospect made her embarrassed and anxious because in some way she didn’t think that her and Alice’s relationship rested on such a premise. Not necessarily that it _shouldn’t,_ but something within her objected to having these thoughts and feelings about her… her closest friend. About _Alice_.

True, the vampire was her mate; they shared some type of supernatural connection, that Bella couldn’t really explain or reciprocate – not because she didn’t _want to_ , but rather because she was human.

_She told me that she loved me, when… when she came back. That she wanted to be part of my life for as long as she could._

It dawned on Bella that this wasn’t a fling, and that wasn’t even accounting for the fact that Alice really didn’t seem like a fling-type of person in the first place – everything about her was… genuine, in a way Bella had never seen from another person. They cuddled; spoke—or at least, they used to speak – soft nothings to each other at night; Alice made her feel safe and happy, and they had fun together when her slight, supernatural _friend_ wasn’t the wound up and irritated mess she’d become after the Cullens arrival.

A chime from her phone abruptly halted her thinking, and she almost fell off her bed in her hurry to grab the phone and hopefully see a reply from Alice.

**> > In Seattle.**

First, elation – at the reply. Then, she blinked, and it struck her that Alice had run 100 miles across the Olympic Peninsula to get away from Forks.

_Or to get away from me…_

She could make it to Seattle in roughly four hours if she got on the road immediately. The roads weren’t in the best condition, and her truck wasn’t either. Maybe she could convince Charlie to borrow his car? She was just about to go and ask him; the chance that he would let her go on a 4-hour – single-way – road trip by herself was miniscule—

**> > Don’t come here.**

**> > Come back, we need to talk** **.**

Of course, Alice saw her decision to brave the long drive to Seattle, Bella thought sourly to herself. And she didn’t want her to. Maybe it was for her own safety, whether from the roads and driving conditions, or maybe it was to protect her from Alice herself – she couldn’t be sure.

The situation was a festering wound, she realized; if this _thing_ between them was left untreated it could turn very bad very quickly – result in consequences that couldn’t be recovered from. They needed to take care of this wound that had now opened between them before it got infected.

**> > Hello?**

Minutes had passed with no reply from Alice. Bella took a deep breath to steady herself and pressed the call-button on Alice’s contact information in her phone. Two signals passed before the call was declined. She tried again and her second call went straight to voicemail.

“Fuck!” Bella yelled to herself and angrily tossed her phone down on her pillow. She rarely cursed but she found herself under a ridiculous amount of stress and worry for her mate, for herself, and for their relationship.

“Hey Bells,” Charlie called from outside the closed door to Bella’s room, “I haven’t seen you all day. You okay?”

“Yeah Dad,” she began and sighed at having to lie to him so much, “just… cramps.”

Charlie was woefully out of his element when it came to the type of cramps Bella was alluding to and felt it best not to pretend to know what he was talking about. Bella had been acting differently since she had come to live in Forks with him, differently compared to how he remembered his daughter to act at least. She was always a bit awkward, and clumsier than most. Quiet and more analytical, he supposed, compared to the usual girls her age.

The almost three years that had passed since she’d last been in Forks and the fact that Bella was a teenager could explain it; but Charlie couldn’t help but worry for his daughter. She seemed sad, more closed-off, constantly tired… not to mention the fight she’d had with Leah on Christmas Eve. They’d been best friends back when they were kids and had remained close even after Bella only came to Forks twice a year in her childhood and early teens, and now their relationship seemed like an explosive and moody roller-coaster at the best of times.

“Have you even been out of your room? Maybe you should go for a walk to get some fresh air?” he suggested.

The books on how to raise a teenager hadn’t really said anything about it so Charlie wasn’t sure, but maybe his daughter was depressed. Fresh air seemed like a good thing to counter that.

“Yeah, for a snack earlier,” the teenager lied, “I’ll be down for dinner in a while. There’s leftover pie from yesterday.”

Charlie absolutely despised how she lying to him made him feel, but he folded and walked back downstairs again – distraught at his daughter’s empty promise that ’she was fine’.

When Alice had remained off the grid for the rest of the Saturday and almost the entire Sunday, Bella texted her mate again; surprise shooting through her at the immediate reply:

**> > You can’t just leave!**

**> > I’m dangerous to you.**

**> > Come back.**

**> > Not yet.**

**> > Alice, please. I love you.**

She didn’t like how desperate she sounded, but in truth she was. The thought not knowing where Alice was, what she was doing, when – or even, _if_ – she was coming back made her want to cry and thrash her room and throw up. In which order, she wasn’t sure.

She eventually had to go get ready for bed and the coming school week, no matter how much she rather wanted to sit and stare at her phone and await another reply from her mate. She knew for a fact that if Alice didn’t want to talk to her there was no realistic way that she could; Alice would see her decide to call or drive to Seattle – if she was even there still.

////

“I wanna know what you know about the Cullens,” Bella demanded as she walked up to Leah’s booth in the diner. It was sort of funny – or tragic, she couldn’t decide – that the two of them only seemed to meet each other on parking lots and in diners these days. She had yet to visit Leah’s place – the older woman had amicably moved out of her parents’ home when she was 16 years old Charlie had explained – and Bella hadn’t been back to the Reservation since Christmas Eve.

“Bella. I told you, it’s tribe-only information,” Leah replied, her casual wave falling to the table and her open face clouding up at Bella’s brusque attitude.

“Charlie is like, 12.5% Quileute native, which makes me 6.25% at least. Shouldn’t that count for something?” Bella countered when she sat down opposite Leah.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Leah reprimanded sternly, angry at Bella’s callous unsensitivity for her Native American culture. As if Bella could suddenly walk in and claim ancestry for personal gain, when she’s never had to face the plight of being indigenous with all that entailed in the first place.

“Sorry,” Bella apologized just a second later, realizing how uncaring she was being, “I’m not actually that much of an ass, Leah. Just… I’m sort of desperate?”

“Even if it did work that way – _which it doesn’t_ – it’s tribe _council_ -only information,” Leah clarified.

“But you’re not on the council?”

“Both my parents are! Look,” Leah released an angry huff to calm herself down, “Harry has a congenital heart defect, they just found out a couple of years ago. He’s too much in the risk-zone for surgery and the stubborn bastard hasn’t even tried eating a bit healthier or anything. He turns 50 this year – maybe he has a couple years left, maybe he goes tomorrow. I’ll be taking his spot on the council whenever that happens, so they keep me up to speed.”

“Shit! Crap, I’m sorry Leah, I didn’t know. Charlie hasn’t said anything,” Bella mumbled, regretful that she’d been so tough on Leah.

“He doesn’t know. Dad is secretive about it, doesn’t want people to treat him like he’s gonna keel over any second. Just the family and the council know.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“Stop apologizing,” Leah ordered and mustered up a half-smile at her stricken friend, “It’s okay. I mean, it sucks, but I’ve had a couple of years to process it and we’re making the best of it. It’ll be pretty rough on Seth though, whenever it happens.”

“If there’s anything I can do—"

“There isn’t. But thanks for offering. Now, about the Cullens. Stop sniffing around that Bella, please. Let it be.”

Bella was thrown for a bit of a loop with Leah suddenly retracing back to their original conversation.

“But why? Clearly something’s up.”

“Because I say so.”

“Okay _Dad,_ ” Bella replied sarcastically, already having been prepared for Leah to be short on the subject. She was sure as hell not going to leave Leah’s connection to the Cullens be.

“I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff,” Leah grins characteristically at her own wise-ass retort. She hadn’t had enough opportunities to annoy Bella since she moved back.

“My God…” Bella sighed, at once exhausted by Leah’s suave confidence and how she always seemed to succeed in either giving Bella whiplash or embarrassing her.

“I can be Him too,” Leah continued, comically raising one of her brows in an over-the-top flirtatious expression.

“I know what you’re doing, and it’s—”

“Working?” the older woman supplied. Bella sighed theatrically; aware that Leah was being difficult and teasing on purpose to turn Bella away from their previous subject.

“Shut up.”

“Good,” Leah smirked, “Because I’ll tell you everything you _need_ to know. And this isn’t one if those things. Just remember what we talked about on Friday and stick to that.”

“I’ll find out eventually, you know. On my own if I have to.”

“I doubt that but good luck, I guess. Are we done? I have to get back to the Rez, meeting up with Jacob and his crew for something,” Leah said, grabbed her shoulder bag and got up from her table to signal that their conversation was, in fact, over regardless of how Bella felt.

“I didn’t know you were hanging with the kids so much,” Bella teased back, glad for the opportunity, “But sure, we’re done. For now. But you’ll hear from me,” she then joked in a nefarious tone and tapped the fingers of her respective hands against each other evilly to really get her point across.

“Can’t wait, Mojo Jojo. See ya’ later!” Leah replied dryly, trying not to laugh at the thought of Bella ever being villainous.

“God damnit…” Bella sighed when she saw the empty coffee cup next to where Leah had sat, and realized that her temperamental friend had left her with the tab. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, oops.  
> (I really actually didn’t mean for my change in posting-schedule to happen at this point in the story, I pwomise!)  
> Btw, I hope that the formatting I chose for the text-conversations makes sense! If not, yell at me and I'll see if I can format them better! :)


	13. Coming clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! An update!  
> I have 4 different final exams I need to retake this coming week, in the span of 5 days, so I am hanging on to life by a thread. 
> 
> (Psst! We’re getting another flashback here; I bestow upon thee ALL THE FLUFF!)

Bella was tired of feeling like she was at a dead end: Alice was nowhere to be seen and she had no clue when she’d be back; Leah was an impenetrable wall and refused to give her any information on what was clearly going on between her and the Cullens.

She’d spent hours mulling over her options. The _sensible_ one was, of course, to follow Leah’s advice and just let things be – let them run their course without involving herself further. But that also risked that people she cared about got hurt, what with vampires and who-knows-what-else running about the town left and right.

And what could she realistically do – being only human – against an entire coven of vampires? But then again, waiting around for Alice to deign to show up…? She needed information, and if anyone could shed some light over everything that was going on in Forks it was the Cullens.

Her only _real_ option, then, was to approach them; a likely double-sword as it may – the consequences of her plan could very well come back to bite her in the ass later. She was aware of this, but she simply couldn’t sit idly by and wait any longer.

_And besides, if things go well enough, maybe they can help explain Alice’s weird behavior…_

Alice hadn’t contacted her since Bella wrote her slightly desperate – and embarrassing, but sincere – confession on Sunday evening, or even given an indication that she’d read the message. Which meant that Bella hadn’t heard from her mate in over 36 hours. As she left her home that Tuesday morning, she decided that she would contact Emmett the first good opportunity she got that day.

A few hours later, she sat with her usual crew in the school cafeteria. Jessica and Mike had secretly decided to begin dating a few weeks earlier, and Jessica had come clean with it just minutes ago. It was one of those things that was a surprise even though it wasn’t; Jessica had been interested in Mike for as long as Bella had known her – which, granted, wasn’t that long but Angela had corroborated her belief – but she’d been too coy to approach him. And Mike, well, he had just been his usual oblivious self. He’d had a low-key crush on Jessica since 8th grade but was convinced she couldn’t possibly be into a sporty geek like him when she was one of the most beautiful and popular girls at school.

Angela and Bella looked at each other and made pretend-gag sounds as Jessica and Mike kissed innocently on the opposite side of the table. They were cute together, and everyone in the crew was glad that they had finally stopped dancing around each other.

“Just because all of you,” Jessica responded to the two girls’ theatrics and waved dismissively at them, “are _tragically_ single.”

“Oof,” Eric piped up. Bella and Angela threw him a dirty look.

“Traitor,” they whispered in unison.

“Wait wait, what is up with that though?” Mike broke away from Jessica – much to her annoyance giving Bella and Angela the attention they wanted – and asked, “How come you guys aren’t dating anyone?”

That wasn’t the type of attention Bella or Angela had been looking for, and they both quickly regretted poking fun at Mike and Jessica in the first place. Jessica – noticing their sudden discomfort – smiled smugly as if to ask them, _‘not so cocky now, are you?’_.

“Well, you know about me,” Eric supplied into the sudden silence, and went back to his phone. Angela – having known him since they were four – had briefly explained to Bella that Eric wasn’t that much into dating and other people in an intimate way – preferring his games, writing, and friends to occupy his time.

“I just haven’t really found anyone interesting yet,” Angela confessed hurriedly, to divert the attention from herself. She hated being in the spotlight in any given situation. And so, the attention of the group fell on Bella.

“Uh…”

“It’s okay Bella, you don—”

“Yes, she does,” Jessica interrupted Angela’s attempt to deescalate the situation, “She just doesn’t want to come out and say that she has a thing for Emmett Cullen,” Jessica leaned conspiratorially over the table and whispered. That peaked Mike’s and Eric’s attention.

“Really?” they both said.

“No,” Bella said sternly, “I told you to stop saying that Jess.”

“But he like, even asked you to hang out with him on Valentine’s Day last week?” Jessica argued.

Sucking in a deep breath Bella realized there was only one way to dissuade Jessica from her persistent nagging. It wasn’t that she was opposed to sharing that detail of her life; her chosen group of friends was clearly open-minded enough, she just hadn’t felt that they had reached the point in their relationship yet where it wouldn’t be weird of her to talk about her sexuality. Maybe that was some internalized phobia – she couldn’t quite say.

“I’m, uh, not really into guys. _That_ way,” she said, trying to hint at it without explicitly saying it out loud.

Mike’s eyes widened, catching on immediately. Angela’s too. Eric was fighting a grin.

“Oh. _Oh,_ ” Jessica uttered, a bit uncomfortable with the fact that she had basically forced Bella to come out of the closet, “I’m sorry—”

“Nah, it’s fine. Was gonna say it anyways at some point. I know you guys are cool enough with that stuff,” Bella disarmed.

“It was sort of obvious, if you ask me,” Eric piped up again to no help whatsoever.

“And like, The Forks LGBTQ-scene seems… rather lackluster?” Bella continued.

“Percentage-wise it’s probably the same as everywhere else, Bella. We’re in Washington, pretty liberal state,” Eric said.

“Yeah, but we’re also out in the middle of nowhere. At least compared to what Bella is used to, right?” Angela filled in.

“Yeah, Forks is pretty tiny compared to where I’m from. Or well, technically I _am_ from Forks, but I mostly grew up in Phoenix anyway. And Massachusetts for a while.”

“Hey cool! I didn’t know you lived in Boston!” Mike said, “I’ve always wanted to visit there.”

“MIT is _the_ dream university,” Eric added.

“It wasn’t Boston. It was a small coastal town. Salisbury. Like the steak.” The table broke out in snickers at Bella’s deadpan analogy.

“Besides, I haven’t really had time to think about dating or whatever since I came here,” she continued.

Her friends would have to settle with that explanation; it wasn’t as if Bella could say that she was in a strange relationship with her childhood friend that turned out to be a vampire, with whom she had some weird indissoluble metaphysical connection. The rest of the gang went back to their respective lunches, not noticing that Bella fell quiet amid their casual bantering and school-talk.

Bella hadn’t thought about Massachusetts in a long time. The oldest memory she had of Alice was from back then; when Bella had just moved there with Renée, and Alice had shown up in her new room. She remembered having thought back to that particular memory in Phoenix before she decided to move across the entire west-coast to shack up with Charlie.

She usually avoided to think back to the two years in Massachusetts, mostly because Renée was particularly _messy_ during that time. Now that she knew her mother had bipolar disorder it was easier to understand her mother’s almost constant highs and lows from when she was a child – but they still bore their mark in Bella’s memories. She’d had Alice at least, even if her strange friend hadn’t been as frequent in her life as seven-to-nine-year-old Bella had wanted.

She treasured one Massachusetts-memory of Alice especially much. Renée had been in the middle of a manic episode – which almost nine-year-old Bella hadn’t understood at the time – and had generally been an absolute pain in their day to day life. Bella had luckily been on her summer break for most of it; Renée’s absurd sleep-schedule had even thrown Bella off hers. She’d opted not to visit her father in Forks because of how strange her mother had been acting.

Bella allowed herself to fully think back to the memory in question.

////

_“Moooooom,” Bella complained loudly, “do we have to?”_

_“Bella! Don’t be difficult!” Renée admonished and tugged Bella’s half-struggling body behind her._

_The 28-year old mother was on a mission; she had seen a local commercial about one of the arcades on the Salisbury Beach Boardwalk and it had awoken a long-forgotten curiosity within her. She’d never played arcade-games; her parents had been conservative when it came to entertainment. And when she had reached her teens and rebelled against that conservatism, arcade-games had been designated to small nerdy corner stores that were much to stigmatizing to enter alone as a teenaged girl hoping to remain in the good graces of her high school friends._

_Her curiosity with arcade-games had ended up being shelved when she had gone on a road trip along the west-coast with her friends after their graduation, and eventually ended up in Forks married to Charlie Swan and giving birth to their daughter Isabella. Things had gone downhill from there, in her own opinion – life in rural Washington hadn’t suited her at all, and while Charlie was the nicest man she’d ever met, he had also turned out to be rather boring in the long run. But she loved her daughter deeply and had insisted on primary custody – which Charlie hadn’t contested – and moved them to Salisbury just a year and a half ago._

_And so, it came that she was rushing through the tourist-packed boardwalk with five bags of clothes and trinkets in one hand and dragging a tired and irritated Bella in the other, on a warm early evening in mid-August of 2010._

_Bella, on the other hand, wasn’t as exalted about going to the arcade with her mother; it was bound to be very warm and stuffy in the building – she’d been there a few weeks earlier and the air-conditioning was very bad; there was a lot of people and noise; and she was tired. Renée had forced her to follow her around for the past three hours while she had darted between all sorts of shops and street vendors. The young girl wasn’t entirely sure what her mother was running on._

_“Mom, it’s really warm in there.”_

_“We’ll just go out to cool off every now and then, okay?” Renée suggested as she dragged her daughter past the doors to the arcade and into a stuffy suffocating blend of sweat, warm sugary drinks, and aftershave._

_Renée didn’t seem to be bothered by the smell, and Bella begrudgingly followed her to a set of machines with a racing game flashing on their screens. She was momentarily excited because it was Mario-Kart and she’d wanted to try that game ever since she saw an advertisement of it on Nickelodeon once._

_“Bella, here!” Renée said excitedly and handed Bella a 20-dollar bill while she sat down in one of the machines, “Go exchange this for quarters at the machine over there!”_

_Bella did as she was told and came back with a pound of quarters in her pocket, only to find that she was too short to comfortably sit in the machine and reach the pedals simultaneously. Angrily she grabbed a fistful of quarters and motioned for Renée to take the rest and briskly walked over to a solo arcade-machine she could stand up to play. Her mother didn’t follow her at least._

_15 minutes later Bella’s quarters had run out, and she went over to where she had last heard Renée._

_“Aren’t you cocky?” she heard her mother say to someone._

_“’Cocky’? More like confident I can beat you,” another voice replied._

_Bella rounded the machine and witnessed Renée wrapped up in a seemingly passionate debate over which vehicle was de facto the best in the Fast & Furious game she was sitting at – energetic but completely out of her depth – with a 30-something year old man that Bella hadn’t ever seen before._

_That did it for Bella. She had been tired enough before being forced to go to the arcade; her money had run out; she couldn’t play the one game she wanted; and her mother seemed to be enjoying herself immensely without regard for Bella’s wish to go home. In a fit of childish defiance, she went up to her mother and her companion._

_“I’m going out for air,” she lied and turned around before Renée could stop her._

_When she arrived outside, she allowed herself to be swept up by the crowd heading down to the beach – the pleasant breeze from the ocean calming her down. As she reached the sandy part, she looked around herself suddenly distraught. She knew she shouldn’t leave Renée; for one because there was no telling what her mother could get up to, and for what Bella had read could happen to young girls wandering around alone at night._

_The sun was setting, and a lot of people were out on the beach enjoying an evening-swim or a late picnic, and Bella found herself wanting to get away from all the people and noise, not caring about her mother any longer. Maybe Alice – her shy and strange friend – would show up if she got out of the crowd for a bit._

_Bella began walking south along the sandy beach. After a few minutes she reached the end of the beach fitted for bathing and sunning and decided to cut up between two beach houses to a long and narrow street advertised as Atlantic Avenue. It was lined with houses facing the ocean and wouldn’t be too hard to navigate back from._

_She walked for another couple of minutes until she arrived at the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. The sun had fully set, and the sky was a pleasantly muted soft blue with some distant clouds. Bella stopped and looked around, breathing out a loud sigh in preparation for beginning her walk back._

**_“Psst!”_ ** _someone voiced to Bella’s left._

_The young girl looked around, and with a burst of welcomed joy she found Alice hiding behind the corner of the house furthest down the street Bella was on. The house in question seemed to be vacant for the moment judging by the dark windows and lack of a car in the driveway. Bella hurried over to her friend, unable to temper her excitement._

_“Alice!” she exclaimed happily when she got a bit closer and flung herself at her friend – who didn’t miss a beat and caught the small girl in her arms._

_“Hey, you,” Bella’s friend said, “long time no see.”_

_“Yeah,” Bella muttered and put on an exaggerated angry face, “where have you been?” She hadn’t seen Alice for over a month, not counting the gift she’d found on her bed about two weeks earlier; a soft white rock shaped sort of like a heart._

_“Around,” Alice teased, and expertly danced around Bella’s attempt to grab her sweater in aggravation, “I missed you though.”_

_“Me too. What are you doing out here?”_

_“Oh, nothing much. I just had a hunch,” Alice began and couldn’t stop a cheeky grin from overtaking her face, “that you would make your way here eventually. Wanna hang out?”_

_Bella giggled at Alice’s silly expression and quickly agreed to her friend’s proposition._

_“What do you want to do?” Alice asked Bella when the latter grabbed her hand and swung it casually between them. Alice knew she was going to do that, because Bella would have had serious difficulties moving her arm if she’d been unprepared._

_“Can we go down to the beach?”_

_Alice considered Bella’s suggestion. It would be dumb to go down to the beach, the crowded part of it at least. A lot of people present, and Alice didn’t exactly fit in among the tanned and warm tourists with her cold alabaster skin. Wouldn’t do to get too close to people other than Bella and risk them noticing those deviant traits – not to mention her red eyes. And it would be especially bad if Alice had to deal with someone among that large population having an accident – like cutting or scraping their foot on a sharp rock on the seabed. But swimming in the ocean with Bella would be fun._

_“Fine. But we’ll have to go down here, where there’s no people,” she explained. Bella had been taught to look out for phrases such as those and coming from anyone but Alice she would have had enough reason to run or call for help – but she trusted her friend and knew she didn’t have any ulterior motives._

_“Okay! But it’s a little high maybe?” Bella said and motioned to the steep decline in front of them. They had made their way to the backyard of the house Alice had appeared next to, and the yard was cut off from the oceanside by an eight-feet high ledge of rock and mud. Bella had learned that she was clumsier than most, and she knew that she would end up tripping and ripping her pants if she tried to climb down it._

_“I can go around?” she suggested. Alice studied her for a moment and the grip she had on Bella’s hand tightened._

_“I can carry you down Bella. I’m very strong, remember?”_

_“Oh right. If you think that works.”_

_Alice bent down to get a proper grip on her young friend and proceeded to pull her up in her arms. Bella gave a yelp at the fluid motion – she had expected there to be some show of exertion when Alice lifted her 60 pounds clean off the ground without any effort._

_“Here we go,” Alice said and flashed Bella a triumphant smile before she simply stepped out from the ledge as if there in fact was something solid under her foot and not an eight-feet steep fall._

_Bella grabbed Alice’s shirt again when they seemed to fall down the ledge, but before she had any time to worry that they would crash-land, they were suddenly standing upright just a few steps from the foaming water of the North Atlantic Ocean._

_Alice broke out in peals of laughter at Bella’s confused expression at suddenly being placed down on the wet sand when they had been over 50 feet away just a few seconds ago._

_“That was cool!” the impressed human hollered out, “can we do that again?”_

_“ **Shhh!** ” Alice cautioned and held a finger in front of her mouth; it would be a shame if some of the street’s residents came looking for the sound following Bella’s exclamation – some of them were home after all, “Some other time. Now! The last one in is a rotten egg!”_

_Bella immediately perked up at the challenge, and Alice began to comically creep towards the water’s edge. Before Bella could think twice about getting her clothes wet while having nothing dry to change into, she took off into a sprint towards the water._

_Alice clearly let her win, judging by the grin she flashed her as Bella unwittingly tossed herself stomach first into water just over 65 degrees warm before registering the uncomfortable temperature of it. Bella quickly righted herself – the water reached to her waist so she could confidently stand up – and glared back at Alice._

_“That’s cheating!” she hissed at her friend. Alice laughed again and joined Bella in the water._

_“How can it be cheating when I so clearly lost?” she grinned victoriously. She had been the winner, albeit of a different game than the one that had been stated._

_“Y-you—”_

_“I just needed you to check how cold the water was,” she continued teasing. Bella humored her and sank down to a squatting position doing her best to keep her shivers to a minimum; she wasn’t going to be outdone by Alice!_

_“Oh, so that is how it is?” Alice then asked a Bella’s staunch silence from where she was perched in the water, shivering like a leaf._

_Before Bella could react and much less respond, her friend had dived below the surface, floating prone just under it. Bella could clearly see her through the water, her strikingly pale form practically shone through the cloud of sand and sediment that her sudden motions had whipped up from the seabed. She took a few steps further out, and Alice followed her under the water but didn’t come up for air until Bella felt a twinge of worry and tugged on her hair._

_“What is it?” Alice asked as she resurfaced._

_“Uh, you were under for almost a minute.”_

_“Don’t worry about me, Bella. I’m a very good swimmer,” Alice calmed, and dived below the water again._

_This time she proceeded to swim in rapid circles around Bella to the point where Bella got dizzy trying to follow her movements. She could feel the occasional fingers poking her legs as Alice pretended to be some sort of sea monster on the hunt. Bella couldn’t keep from laughing at her silly friend but was quickly interrupted when Alice shot up again and sprayed Bella with a mouthful of water._

_Bella shrieked at having water that’s been in someone’s mouth sprayed in her face, and frantically dipped down to wash it off. Then, naturally, followed payback – and before long the two of them were embroiled in a water-fight to rival them all. She couldn’t fully understand how Alice managed to whip up miniature-tsunamis with her bare hands – bursts of water that forced Bella to, in vain, shield herself every time they were incoming._

_Alice made sure to not move them too far out – the water reached to just under Bella’s shoulders when she stood up – but further out the waves could easily send a young human child tumbling and being sucked away by the currents. She’d keep Bella safe, though._

_She only ventured out to deeper parts of the oceanside twice – quickly enough that Bella was equally confused the second time – to launch an especially powerful water-attack, which sent Bella into a squealing-fit._

_After some 20 minutes Alice had to take mercy on the poor girl and held up her arms in surrender. She faked complete exhaustion, and commended Bella on how she’d manage to outlast her. The human narrowed her eyes skeptically at Alice but perked up at the praise._

_A while later found the two friends floating in the knee-deep part of the water, just a few feet from the shoreline. Even if Alice wasn’t exhausted the way Bella was, she was too all laughed out._

_“I really like you Alice,” Bella admitted into the silence._

_“Aw Bella, I really like you too!” Alice return cheerfully. She floated a bit closer and took the small girl’s hand to hold._

_“Why do you only visit me sometimes?”_

_“It’s hard for me to come around. I’m sometimes very busy,” Alice lied contritely, “Besides, I’m not good with people. You are the exception.”_

_“Oh, okay…”_

_“But I think about you all the time, Bella. How and when I’ll visit the next time. I’ll be a part of your life for as long as you—as I can,” she professed hurriedly – they were going to be interrupted soon. She hated how she couldn’t speak of the circumstances that kept them apart; no one was really forcing her to keep them a secret, but she felt it unnecessary to expose someone so young to this truth._

_“Bella!” someone shouted in the distance, interrupting the young girl’s reply to Alice._

_Bella jerked up to a sitting position in the shallow water at hearing her name. It was shouted a few more times by two different voices in quick succession. She recognized one of them as her mother’s voice._

_“I’m here Mom!” she called back and stumbled up on the shore, scarping her foot on a rock half-hidden in the coarse sand. It had grown a lot darker outside compared to when she had arrived at the area, but she’d had too much fun with Alice to notice until now._

_Two silhouettes were moving about on the ledge above the beach. Both jumped down and she recognized them as Renée and the man she’d been with at the arcade._

_“You’re soaked!” her mother exclaimed, “Did you go **swimming?!** ”_

_“Yeah. I got bored.”_

_“What were you **thinking?!** I’ve been so worried! Bella! You could have drowned, o-or someone could have carried you off!” Renée shouted frantically, wrapping her arms around her daughter._

_“Alice watched over me. We had a water-fight,” Bella explained as if it was the most natural thing ever and plucked a stray seaweed off her soaked sweater._

_Phil glanced curiously at Renée; there was clearly no one else present at the beach. Renée was too frazzled to give time for his questioning look and proceeded to carry Bella towards her car and back home._

////

Bella ended up being pulled out of her reminiscing by Angela asking her if she was alright after she’d been zoned out for a while. The first bell signaling the end of the lunch hour rang and they got up to rid themselves of their trays, but before they left the cafeteria, she spotted Emmett Cullen also heading towards the bins to empty his tray of untouched food. He looked at her curiously.

“ _Library_ ,” she mouthed while looking him in the eyes before Bella could really stop herself, hoping he could decipher the three quiet syllables and the movement of her lips amongst the crowd and mayhem in the dishwasher queue.

Emmett perked up and flashed Bella a smile that she found herself expecting. Her coming class was AP European History, so she could easily slip away to the library with the excuse of looking for some literature. He shared that class with her, and hopefully he could figure out an excuse of his own and meet her there; she had decided on shouldering on with her plan to approach the Cullens for information, and Emmett was the easiest of them to talk to.

True; Bella wanted to find out what had happened between the Quileute and the Cullens to make Leah despise them so much. If the family had killed people on the Reservation at some point, that could very likely mean that Leah or someone else there know what they are. Or at least suspected; there were very few other reasons Bella could think of that made Leah’s animosity towards them make sense.

But for now, figuring out that connection had to take the backseat – she desperately needed someone to talk to about Alice.

“Glad we are finally free of the ridiculous rumor of our star-crossed romance,” Emmett said by way of greeting Bella when he walked up to her in the library 30 minutes later, having overheard Bella’s explanation to her friends about not being attracted to men.

Bella couldn’t clamp down on a snort, much to Emmett’s delight. Rosalie hadn’t taken well to the rumor in the first place, and then Emmett had accidentally made it even worse by making such a scene on Valentine’s Day in front of most of their peers because of his carefree and cheerful – but sometimes thoughtless – disposition. His mate had been more fiery than usual in consequence, and Bella accidentally crossing the line during their last visit to the library hadn’t exactly calmed her down.

“What’s up?” he asked as Bella frowned.

“Uh. I… _shit_ … I need some help,” Bella confessed, cursing under her breath. She didn’t like the position this could end up putting her in, but she had committed, and it would be stupid to try and backtrack now.

“With what? Some school-stuff?”

“No. Some… _‘V’-stuff_ ,” Bella admitted.

“Oh. Okay, sure. Just… let’s walk over here,” Emmett acquiesced and led Bella over to the furthest wall of the library, away from the small cluster of students present.

“It’s animal blood, right?” Bella whispered when it became clear that Emmett waited for her to say something. He frowned.

“I thought I said that.”

“No, you only said it wasn’t _human_ —whatever.”

“Yeah, it is. Why?”

“So… my, uh, friend tried it,” Bella began, dreading having to drag up the memory of the past Friday again with all it brought with it, “and almost ended up biting me.”

Emmett was clearly taken by surprise, by the way his eyes widened. And then, just as quickly, his jaw set bitterly, and his otherwise so open and cheerful expression was replaced with something much more rugged. His already large muscular frame and angular face made him look more like 20 years old, and not the 17 or 18 years of a high school junior, but this recent change made him look even older and much more dangerous.

Bella took a careful reflexive step backwards.

“Were you with them?” Emmett asked.

“No. Not while, _you know_. But she came back, and she was sort of weird and got really close and then she, uh, smelled my neck a bunch and like almost bit me,” Bella word-vomited.

She realized too late that she’d unintentionally revealed that her friend was in fact a ‘she’ – not entirely in line with her wish to keep as much about Alice’s true identity out of the Cullens’ knowledge.

Emmett shuddered and his expressive bright golden eyes visibly darkened to more of a brass shade, and as that happened Bella’s breath hitched. Suddenly she was afraid, realizing that she might have overestimated Emmett’s willingness to talk to her about this particular subject.

“I think you should talk to Carlisle,” he said, his tone slightly strained.

“Umm…”

Emmett took a few deep breaths through his mouth to collect himself. He didn’t like the scared look on Bella’s face and knowing he caused it. The human smelled good, her overall scent teasing about what ambrosia her blood could be – and even though Emmett was fully committed to his family’s more humane diet, that didn’t mean that such an in-your-face description of how Bella’s friend had almost gotten to taste her blood was easy.

Human blood was still a temptation to him – he was nowhere near Carlisle’s level of control, even if he could resist its call well. Being alone with Bella – or any one of the two other especially fragrant humans in the school – however, took away all the other distracting smells that masked and blended with theirs. The hallways and classrooms of the high school were always brimming with students; dozens upon dozens of different cosmetics, perfumes, and traces of household-pets mingled with sweat all made for a stifling but quite effective combination.

Bella wasn’t in any real danger from him – he always kept himself well-fed, they currently kept an acceptable distance between them, he had his own and his family’s morals and teachings to relieve his anxieties with, and the knowledge that he hasn’t strayed from their diet in over 60 years further strengthened his resolve. Part of him just couldn’t help impulsively _going there_ at times.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so intense,” Emmett said apologetically once his eyes lightened up again just a few seconds later and he relaxed his posture, “What happened next?”

“She ran away. I mean, I guess she controlled it – it was just sort of scary. But she fled, and she hasn’t come back since.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Somewhere in Seattle,” Bella admitted. She figured Seattle was big enough for the Cullens to fail in finding Alice if the shit hit the fan and they turned out to be crazy after all.

“My father can explain things much better than I can. I think you should talk with him. We can do it at the hospital, if you want.”

“I don’t know…” Bella mumbled. She wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of meeting yet _another_ vampire.

“He’s a good listener. And there’s no telling what your friend might get up to over there, it really is in everyone’s best interest if we get her under control.”

“She’s not psycho, Emmett!” Bella defended her mate.

“Might be true. But there are things that the _thirst_ does to us that can be viewed as pretty ‘psycho’.”

“ _Fine._ I’ll meet this Carlisle,” what other option did she have but to relent? “At the hospital.”

“Good. I’ll call him now and tell him you’re coming. Feel free to take my word for it, he’s probably the nicest old geezer you’ll ever meet.”

Bella stayed for Emmett’s conversation with Carlisle and agreed to drive to the hospital after her last class. At least she’d be in a neutral environment with plenty of witnesses, so she felt reasonably reassured that she’d survive the meeting at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update in the first days of September!


	14. The doctor will see you now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After four finals; a week of introducing new students to campus; and the first week of the new semester – all happening in rapid succession – I bring you: AN UPDATE! Yay!
> 
> (Really, the first week basically went Shoryuken on me, hence the late update.)
> 
> I don’t wanna say that this chapter is _filler_ per se – at least I hope it doesn’t come across as such – but it is sort of establishing plot-points for future chapters. Maybe? I don’t even know. And it is quite dialogue-heavy: I like writing dialogue-scenes, but even I think I outdid myself here. So like, happy reading?

“Do you want me to come with?” Emmett offered as Bella stepped out of her car on the parking lot of the local hospital. He was already there, waiting for her.

“No, it’s fine,” she eased out her objection.

She _really_ didn’t want to be stuck again in a conversation with two vampires she didn’t know after the fiasco the last time, when Rosalie had exploded in her face. She knew she had been the cause of it, but that didn’t make the idea of having a snarling vampire barely kept at bay in front of her any less scary.

“Okay, I’ll go home. Give you two some privacy. He’s probably in his office. Maybe you should take my number in case you need to reach me later, though.”

“We’re lucky I dispersed the rumors of us by coming out; they’d have a field-day if they knew you were giving me your number,” Bella remarked with humor. Emmett’s booming heartfelt laughter almost sent her scurrying back.

“Oh man, that was funny,” he sighed a moment later, and she couldn’t help but return a quick smile.

They exchanged numbers and Bella found that she wasn’t so much opposed to the idea after all. So far Emmett hadn’t really given her any reason to doubt him. He seemed to be honest enough in exactly everything he did – from spazzing out at school, to booming out his laughter in public with no care for anyone looking strangely at him, to genuinely seeming to want to befriend her. Or at least prove that they weren’t the callous explosive sociopaths Rosalie made them out to be at first glance.

Emmett left shortly afterwards, and Bella walked inside Forks Community Hospital.

“Hi? I have an appointment with Dr. Cullen, uh, where do I go? My name’s Isabella Swan, by the way, I mean if you need to check me in or something,” she babbled nervously.

The town’s hospital wasn’t too big, but it had been years since she was last inside it – a sprained ankle when she had been visiting Charlie six summers ago – and she didn’t fancy getting lost in a labyrinth of narrow near-identical corridors. She tried not to wrinkle her nose at the antiseptic smell cloaking the reception hall.

The assistant-nurse manning the reception smiled sympathetically at her – likely used to dealing with hospital-averse people all the time, “Let me check you in… there we go! Dr. Cullen is in his office, just take the stairs here to your left and go straight down the corridor. His office is the third door to your right.”

Bella thanked him and scurried off; hospitals really gave her the creeps – especially so after her quite frankly traumatic experience with dumping Renée at an emergency psychiatric hospital back in Arizona. She’d seen and heard things there that she would much rather scrub from her memory.

The navigational instructions eventually led her to a door stenciled with ‘ _Carlisle Cullen, Family Physician_ ’. Shakily, she picked up her phone and dialed 911 as a precaution and locked it; if things went to hell, she might have time to send a call their way. Feeling only marginally safer she gathered up her courage and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” said a voice from within.

She was immediately stumped when she stepped into the small office and faced Carlisle Cullen for the first time. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t what was presented before her:

He was young – early 30’s, tops – and had a very placid aura surrounding him. His hair was blonde and professionally slicked back, he had only a few inches on her in height and an average, lean build – nothing close to the mountain of muscle that was Emmett. The only thing that disclosed what Carlisle really was to Bella was his trademark golden eyes and extraordinarily pale skin.

“Hello, Isabella,” he said kindly, his voice a soft and soothing baritone. Very calm and doctor-like, she decided.

“U-uh, um.”

“Not what you expected, I take it?” Carlisle asked and fired off a smile at her that could have blasted her off her feet.

_Jesus Christ… Jessica would faint if she saw this guy_.

“No? Emmett said you were an old geezer,” she fumbled out and wanted to slap herself across the face for how cringey she was being.

Carlisle released an airy chuckle, “I think my son played a prank on you.”

_His ‘son’…_ , she thought to herself – spoken without even the slightest notion of sarcasm or insincerity.

“S-so, how—” she began, she’d verbally tear Emmett a new one later for this.

“A few centuries,” Carlisle replied easily before she’d even finished her question, “Now, Emmett told me that you and I should talk. About your _friend_.”

Throwing caution to the wind Bella decided to just go for it, the games that had gone on around her for the past few weeks had worn on her patience and she just wanted things over with.

_Like ripping off a band-aid._

“Because you already know of our secret, you’re free to ask what you want. Not technically breaking any rules.”

_1-2—_

“Wait, what ‘rules’?” There was a sharp glint in Carlisle’s eyes at her obvious confusion.

“Has your friend not told you about them? The Volturi and their Law?” Carlisle asked. He might have very well asked Bella to intricately explain what the Golden Ratio was for how little she understood of his question.

“Uh, what?”

“Oh my. I don’t want to worry you Isabella, but that is… less than desirable,” Carlisle said, and motioned for the woman to sit down at the chair opposite his desk – she was still standing stiffly just inside the door to his office, “Our kind is ruled by… well, a royalty. Three self-appointed monarchs, more like. And they have constituted rules by which every one of our kind must abide. All of them hearken back to a single Law; humankind cannot be allowed to know of our existence.”

“Okay. So, what does that mean? If one breaks it?”

“Breaking any of the rules is punishable by death.”

She grew cold at that revelation. If revealing the existence of vampires was a capital offence, then Alice was in violation of it! Ever since she told Bella what she was. Maybe even before that; Alice had displayed some decidedly non-human traits back when Bella was a kid as well, even if the human had been much too young and innocent to understand what they meant.

“It still happens. That humans are told about us. It is in fact rather common in certain circles, but conditions apply.”

“What conditions?” Bella asked, barely above a whisper. She was fighting the urge to throw up.

“Unpleasant ones, shall we say. Tell me Isabella, what _do_ you know about our kind?”

The vampire-doctor’s failure to give a proper answer to her question aggravated her – but then again, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. Maybe he somehow sensed that and decided to spare her.

“That you’re, well, vampires. Drink blood. Don’t sleep, I think? You don’t age, you’re… predators. Animalistic,” Bella recited, seemingly only able to speak in fractured sentences – reeling from a similar sense of panic as the one she’d felt the night Alice told her she was a vampire. Carlisle frowned.

“True enough, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. We may be… animalistic, but we’re also individuals – the influence our urges have over us can vary and our resistances to them can be practiced. Now, the way I understood it, your friend lost control of hers?”

He didn’t like being so direct when it clearly disturbed the human in front of him, as evidenced by the slight tremor in her body and the beads of sweat breaking out of the pores on her forehead. But the circumstances dictated that he had to be; a vampire not fully in control of their faculties was often sloppy, and a sloppy vampire meant a much greater risk of being seen or accidentally turning victims into new vampires. The last thing the citizens in this region needed was the Volturi descending on them to clean up the mess. That would turn very ugly very fast, in Carlisle’s experience, for vampires and humans alike.

“It’s not like she’s chaotic—” Bella huffed out a wavering sigh, “I mean, I guess she did. Lose control. Everything was _fine,_ ” a tear threatened to escape her eye and she angrily wiped it away, “She’s always been so sweet to me. When I was younger, she played with me and comforted me when I was sad. And now, she’s been really kind and understanding. And we’ve, like, even cuddled.”

“But… she’s changed. Now she’s irritated. Moody and angry, almost all the time. Not at me, just, like… generally. In late-December, she almost attacked me. Something set her off and from one second to the other she was all hissy and growly – clearly not herself, not like I remember her. I—she’s still herself, _sort of_ , but it’s like there’s a _split_ in her,” she shouldered on, distraught but with no time to feel embarrassed about how she’d just admitted to something as intimate as cuddling in front of a complete stranger.

“I believe I can explain your friend’s behavior,” Carlisle supplied.

Apparently, he was one of those people who could literally smile with his eyes, and he was both eye-smiling and mouth-smiling sympathetically at Bella as she explained the tragic change in her friend’s temperament.

“My kind are… territorial creatures. We claim areas for territory… and sometimes people – be they human or vampire. I can’t say for certain, but I believe that my family’s arrival here might have stirred up that territorial behavior in your friend; other vampires encroached on something she considered hers – excuse my lack of tact.

“Okay…” Bella sighed and stressfully raked a hand through her hair.

“We’re ruled by instincts much like those of an animalistic predator, like you said, and they can be very difficult to temper once they flare up.”

Alice had explained this to Bella many weeks prior, about the territorial predilection and instincts.

“So, I’m – what? – like property to her?” she asked irately in response to what Carlisle was saying – she couldn’t yet be sure that he wasn’t trying to put a wedge in-between her and Alice.

“No, I wouldn’t take it that far,” Carlisle gave the human a careful smile, “Based on how you’ve described her there’s nothing that makes me think she’d act this way on purpose. It’s clear that she genuinely cares about you. And you about her. My children told me after your… explosive confrontation in the library last week, that you’re very protective and secretive of her. Do you mind me asking why that is?”

“She’s a childhood friend.”

“You mean that you grew up together? Did she become a vampire while you knew her, as kids?” Carlisle asked for clarification, his voice having dropped both in volume and tone, worried that they were dealing with an Immortal Child and deeply saddened by what he’d be forced to do about it.

“No. She’s always been the same. She’s… I dunno, she looks like she’s… 17? Give or take a year, maybe. But you guys are… well, you’re basically airbrushed so it’s a bit hard to determine. She’s always looked like that, but she’s never clarified, you know, her _biological_ age or whatever,” Bella replied, inadvertently steering Carlisle away from his dark assumptions. The doctor released a habitual breath of relief.

“Has she mentioned how long she’s been like this?” he asked, trying to get a grasp of how old the young woman’s vampire was.

Carlisle and his family had first assumed that the unknown vampire they found traces off in Forks was a semi-residential “vegetarian” like themselves, on account of how no dead bodies showed up around Forks after it became apparent that the vampire wasn’t just passing through the rural town.

When they had figured out that Bella hadn’t known what the Cullens’ golden eyes meant regarding their diet, they crossed off that theory. After Rosalie’s rash actions following the confrontation in the school library last week had made it abundantly clear that the wolves on the Reservation hadn’t extended a truce to any other vampires besides him and his family, the only sensible option left was that said vampire had well-practiced self-control or was part of a reputable coven that could conduct their business discreetly.

“She said since 1920.”

“Okay,” Carlisle blew out a contemplative breath from his nose; 100 years as a vampire put her in the same range as his own progeny and self-titled children, he could work with that, “That’s relieving.”

In the light of Carlisle’s explanation, it became apparent how little Alice had known, how little she’d been able to forward to Bella in the first place. The doctor seemed to have been only mildly placated by the fact that Alice was around 100 years old and that told her that Alice’s age was likely pocket-change in comparison to his. Earlier he’d said he was ‘a few centuries’ old – for all Bella knew every member of his family could be hundreds of years old as well – and that certainly meant he was much more worldly.

Shockingly, she realized that she was finally being given information. Maybe not the kind she’d so desperately been craving – most of what she’d heard so far weren’t exactly music to her ears – but it was important, nonetheless.

“…She also said something about the instincts,” she started after she’d gotten a few moments to think – ready to put more trust in Carlisle, reveal more about Alice, “but not in the way you did. She… uh, she said she’s not met many of her kind before.”

“Yes, she does come across as a bit of a recluse,” Carlisle smiled, trying to lighten up the human’s mood, “but that is very common actually. We don’t usually play well with others of our kind.”

“How come your coven is so _calm_ then? Why aren’t you angry about some random vampire encroaching on _your_ territory?” Bella demanded. She thought back to how calm Emmett had been, given everything, even when she’d successfully fooled both Rosalie and him into thinking she was protected by what could have been an entire coven of vampires.

“We prefer ‘family’, actually,” Carlisle corrected, “but to answer your question: the most glaring difference would, of course, be our diet. It’s an inside joke, but we refer to ourselves as ‘vegetarians’. And this diet makes it easier for us to temper our instincts and urges. A family of four vampires, who’ve lived with each other for as long as we have, is more unusual than you’d think. Covens larger than three or four members tend to implode eventually because of our instincts and inherent urge for power and dominion over others, unless there is a very powerful force – strong kinship, for instance – driving us to stick together.”

“Why doesn’t all vampires feed on animal blood if it’s so much better?” she asked confrontationally, the older man’s strangely blasé attitude frustrating her. Carlisle chuckled.

“It might allow us to form more meaningful bonds with each other and even with humans, but it’s not a miracle cure,” and just like that, Carlisle’s easy smile fell away, “Don’t be fooled into thinking that, Isabella; our choice of diet is a consequence of our life-philosophy – not the other way around. I’ve lived my entire life by these morals and tried to instill them in my family-members as well. But I’ve never forced any of them to stay and follow it; they genuinely care about the people around them even without my input.”

“But why then would any vampire prefer a diet that makes them more vicious? This… disregard f-for others’ lives,” Bella fumbled when she realized that her generalization applied to Alice as well, “you’ve all been human once, too, right?”

“Simply put, most of us don’t have the baseline sense of character to _want_ to practice this way of life in the first place,” the doctor said, quietly impressed by the young human woman’s brazenness, “Why would you want to settle for anything less once you’ve had a first taste of the euphoria that is human blood? And then there is the process of what, I suppose, you could call ‘selective evolution’ which rules our society.”

“What do you mean?”

“Most of my kind tend to pick their… protégés based on character-traits. If you’re going to spend the foreseeable future with someone – possibly eternity – you would, reasonably, want that person’s values to align with your own.”

What Carlisle was saying, essentially describing his specie’s society self-perpetuating these animalistic, borderline feral attitudes and values – shaping its new members with it – made for a frightening reality. A never-ending circle of brutality.

“Besides, drinking animal blood doesn’t remove the temptation of human blood for us, the way human blood temporarily does after consumption. On the contrary, drinking animal blood can even make the temptation for the human variant unbearable, and even the most genuine converter might fold under the pressure. Think of it as weaning off an extremely addictive drug, one for which the abstinence won’t ever truly cease.”

“That’s… sad. And frightening.”

“It is. But with our condition comes an altered sense of empathy – because we never age, we will ultimately outlive everything around us.”

Carlisle fidgeted with some papers on his desk, and his pleasantly hospitable smile creased in an uncomfortable grimace. The rustling gave Bella a brief pause to consider what could be causing Carlisle’s sudden hesitance:

_Is he… nervous…?_

“You may think it strange or silly – and you wouldn’t be the first – but my wife Esme and I, we really do view Emmett and Rosalie as our children, and they see us as something like parents,” he finally settled on.

His words made Bella understand that she would have to radically reassess what she thought of the Cullens. They weren’t just _roleplaying_ a family to successfully infiltrate human society – for whatever reason – they really _were_ a family. Either Carlisle was a _disturbingly_ good actor and expert manipulator, or he really was as kind and sympathetic as Emmett had made him out to be.

“We wed many years ago, and when Rosalie and Emmett joined our family – each of them stemming from completely different past lives – they wanted or needed parental figures as much as we wanted to care for them.”

Bella found that she was struggling to keep her composure. A coven of vampires who saw each other as members of a family, rather than just handy-but-disposable allies to have in the pursuit of power. Whom respected human life enough to choose to feed on animals; whom worked and went to school; whom wanted to befriend their peers – at least in Emmet’s case. All led by a true enigma of a man.

“Because time dulls most things, even the respect for life, you might find you care less and less about your surroundings as time stretches out into eternity. Unless you have things to live for, people to live for. Like I have with my calling to help the sick and care for my family. Like my family-members have with their own ambitions and caring for each other and our community. Maybe like your friend have in you.”

_If only he knew…_

Carlisle’s sympathy for Bella’s strange and very unconventional relationship with Alice was appreciated. But she and Alice were mates, and she had yet to inform anyone in the vampire-family about that. Alice hadn’t even seemed to fully know what it meant herself, and thus hadn’t been in a position where she could educate Bella on the subject, but maybe Carlisle could?

“Dr. Cullen—”

“Carlisle, please. You don’t have to use formal titles with me, Isabella,” Carlisle smiled kindly.

Bella found that she didn’t mind how he used her full name – she hadn’t even gotten the urge to correct him as they introduced themselves. Usually she informed new people of her preference within the first minute of conversation but with Carlisle her full name felt oddly enough okay, and she couldn’t pinpoint why.

“Carlisle,” she corrected herself, “my friend. She…told me about another thing your kind can do.”

“Oh?”

“She told me about mates,” she pushed out before she could change her mind.

Carlisle’s eyes grew comically large for a moment before he seemed to clear his throat to regain his composure, and Bella fleetingly wondered if she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Her worries were again quelled by Carlisle returning to his calm, almost scholarly, disposition.

“And did she explain to you what that means?”

“Yes. And I also know that Rosalie and Emmett are mates,” Bella said before she could stop herself. It was a hell of a gamble revealing that knowledge, because if mate-connections could somehow be used against the people affected by them she might have very well painted a giant red target on herself and bid herself adieu just now.

“I see. That’s true. How did she know that?”

“She didn’t. I did, I figured it out.”

“How?” Carlisle breathed out; his curiosity absolutely peaking.

“Because they look at each other the same way my friend looks at me,” Bella admitted quietly, determined despite the uncomfortable exposure.

Time seemed to come to a momentary halt there. The spark in Carlisle’s eyes dulled for just a few seconds, as if he turned his focus to something outside of the conversation they were having.

“So… she said it happened when she first met me. The summer before I turned six. That she, like, _connected_ with me, got this sudden and permanent urge to protect me. That I became her tether to the world,” Bella continued when Carlisle remained quiet.

“That sounds like a mate-connection alright. Humans can’t usually reciprocate that feeling; they tend to be… attracted to us by our… other qualities – we have an allure that can be hard not to notice, as I’m sure you know. Is it like that for you?”

A loaded question if there ever was one; how would Bella even go about explaining something this complicated to Carlisle – an almost-stranger? _Should_ she even do that?

_Doesn’t Alice deserve to be part of this conversation?_

She wasn’t even sure herself what exactly the things she felt for her vampire meant, and that bare thought of trying to put words to it freaked her out.

“Not like her, I don’t feel any _connection_ the way she does. But I… I know there’s _something_ there, and that’s not only because she’s beautiful and smells nice or whatever. She makes me happy – at least when she’s, well, like normal. Recently I get antsy and sort of down when she’s not with me, though...”

“Why only recently?”

“I didn’t feel like _this_ when I was a kid. I liked her, how kind and sympathetic she was. Then she, uh… she disappeared. I didn’t see her for eight years, and well. I assumed she’d just been a part of my imagination as I grew older. Then she came back in December, and now I can’t… it _hurts_ t-to think of being without her,” Bella struggled to explain through the threat of breaking down in tears. Carlisle’s expression softened again.

“By a chance encounter I met Esme for the first time while she was still a human, a long time ago, and like your friend I stayed away from her for many years. Emmett and Rosalie have their own story as well, but that one isn’t mine to share. So, believe me when I say that I understand how you and your friend feels. Can you contact her in any way? I’d very much like to talk to her, maybe my family or I can help.”

“She has a phone with her, but she won’t answer my calls or text-messages. Haven’t heard from her since Sunday.”

“That’s… odd. I suppose it’s possible that her convictions are keeping her away. Vampirism, in addition to making us instinctual and aggressive, can also tune up our other convictions and personality-traits. If she was very protective in her human life, it’s possible those convictions override her need to be close to you.”

Bella was reluctant to mention what Alice had told her about having no memories from her human life, or of her special gift; Alice should have a say in who is given that information about her.

“I urge you to call her until she answers. From what you’ve told me I find it unlikely that she’s running rampant in Seattle – generally she seems to be very controlled, despite her slip-ups. Even so, a desperate vampire – especially one with so little experience of other vampires and the rules that control our society – is bad. She could unknowingly jeopardize our joint secret.”

Bella certainly didn’t want that, those Volturi-guys didn’t sound like the most hospitable bunch based on what Carlisle had told her about them. Death-penalties left and right; _self-_ appointed monarchs…? Surely that meant they were very powerful, if they could decide to be kings of an entire specie just like that? She didn’t want to have anything to do with them, and she certainly didn’t want to give them a reason to come to the area because of something Alice might accidentally do.

“If you convince her to return here, I’d happily set up a meeting between us – just me, you and her, to prove my goodwill. I think that could be beneficial for all of us; if she’s open to it, I can teach her what she’ll need to know to keep you both safe in the future.”

“You turned out to be different from what I thought, Carlisle, and I’m glad we talked. But I need time to think about your offer. And there’s other things going on right now that I need to work out as well. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, least of all my friend. It… it’d destroy me if that happened.”

“I understand that Isabella, trust takes time to build up. I’d too hate if anyone got hurt; I took an oath to do no harm once upon a time, and I plan to stick by it. No one in my family will report your friend’s breaking of the Law to the Volturi, they’re no friends of ours, but know that they have eyes and ears in many other places.”

The fact that Alice had already broken a law she seemed unaware existed – which was punishable by death – was something Bella couldn’t really afford herself to think about right now, or she’d crumble to pieces. She already had enough on her plate: the consequences of Alice’s abrupt losses of self-control and how those had happened of varying degree three times in less than two months; what Alice was doing in Seattle – if she was in fact killing people left and right; a potential meeting between the two of them and Carlisle that could go wrong in any number of ways.

And, on top of that, the Cullens’ apparent connection to Leah and the Quileutes’ Reservation.

_Leah could be in danger._

“Thanks again. I guess I’ll talk to Emmett later, when I’ve decided,” Bella shrugged and got up from the chair. She had a lot to think about, and she wanted to do it in the privacy of her own room.

“I’d be happy to talk to you whenever you need,” Carlisle smiled and bid the young woman farewell. He would have to talk to his family about what had transpired – they always kept each other up to speed.

////

Bella had only driven half a mile from the hospital towards her and Charlie’s house when she spotted someone familiar at the side of the road, walking in her direction. Confused, she slowed her truck to a stop next to Leah and rolled down her window.

“Hey, what’re you doing out here?”

“Nothing much, just out for a stroll,” Leah shrugged.

Considering La Push was a 30-minute drive away Bella doubted that Leah was simply ‘out for a stroll’. But she wasn’t going to push it, because she’d learned by now that Leah would only push back equally hard and they’d end up getting nowhere.

“Oh. Do you need a ride somewhere?” she offered out of hospitality. Leah was only dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans – not the warmest wardrobe-choice for a ‘stroll’ in the middle of February.

“Have you been with the Cullens?” Leah asked instead, throwing Bella for a loop.

“I was at the hospital,” she replied tersely.

_Of course, she starts up her usual bullshit again_ , she cynically thought to herself.

“Doing what?”

“Is that any of your business?” Bella demanded angrily, then in a spur of the moment she decided to cut their conversation off before she said something she’d regret later, “You know what, never mind. I’m just gonna go home.”

Bella rolled up her window and tried not to feel guilty at Leah’s exasperated expression as she put the car in gear again and drove off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so technically no Alice this chapter (don’t hate me please). She’ll be back next chapter, I pwomise! Mayyyybe I’ll even upload it a few days quicker (I’ll try at least), to make up for this one.
> 
> This chapter went through a bunch of last-minute edits where I moved quite a few paragraphs around to get the loooooooong conversations to flow better (trust me, it was way worse before) – yell at me if something doesn’t make sense!


	15. Epiphyte

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3

**> > Sorry. I went too far.**

Leah texted Bella a few hours later, as the younger woman was lying in bed trying to decide whether she should text or call Alice again – as per Carlisle’s advice. Whether or not she should subject herself to the possibility of only hearing the ‘subscriber unavailable’ voicemail again. If she only sent a text, she was at least blissfully unaware whether or not Alice cared enough to have her phone turned on.

**> > What’s your beef with the   
Culle-**

Bella had the mind to delete the message before she acted too rashly and sent it.

Leah knew something; Bella was absolutely convinced from their brief exchange after she’d left the hospital. The brash woman had immediately gone to the topic of the Cullens when there was no obvious reason for her to do so. How she had known Bella had talked with a member of that family she wasn’t sure of, but the prospect of Leah spying on her felt very real these days.

**> > You did. I’m gonna sleep   
now, talk to you later.**

She thought back to what had happened the first time they’d met after Bella had moved back to Forks; the Blacks’ Christmas dinner. Leah acted aggressively, threatening even, and Bella hadn’t been able to understand _why_.

And the following day the older woman had also acted strangely when she’d come by to apologize for the dinner-party, further fueling what would become these new suspicions. Bella had even fleetingly considered the possibility that Leah wasn’t human either, back then, judging by how sensitive her nose was and how she’d been so keyed up and angry – but that theory had mostly been the result of Alice having confessed to not being human herself just hours prior.

But she _had_ overheard a conversation between Leah and a few other people towards the end of the dinner, when she’d been walking back with dishes to the Blacks’ kitchen.

Like she’d obsessively done the days following it, she went through the night – and the conversation – in question, for the umpteenth time. Analyzing minute by minute, one action after the other, in an attempt to figure out the full chain of events. And what part the little she’d overheard of their conversation played in it all.

She hadn’t had the time – nor the will, for that matter – to think back to it in a good while, and maybe that was why something about it itched at her mind this time around. There was another detail, something she’d waved off as just another nonsensical part of Leah’s rage-fueled outburst during that spectacularly dramatic night.

The conversation she’d almost walked in on had consisted of Leah, her parents, and Billy Black. Instinctively she’d stopped just short of turning the corner into the kitchen, but not before she’d heard Leah refer to a bad smell. The smell of ‘something’- _“suckers”_ – she’d been too late to catch the earlier words – emanating from Bella. She also thought she could remember something like a sound of disapproval coming from Sue, but she wasn’t sure about that. Then, the hushed conversation had ended.

With a gasp, Bella connected the dots: vampires were ‘suckers’. Of blood. Leah had been referring to _blood_ suckers.

_Vamp—she **knows!**_

Her heart was pounding heavily in her ears and she had to fight the trembling that was overtaking her body when she was finally beginning to understand what Leah’s problem was: she knew that vampires existed. And what’s worse is that she’d known much earlier than Bella had, and apparently _smelled_ Alice on Bella’s clothes that night.

That was the only reasonable explanation, now that Bella’s experiences since that fateful evening had made her able to see it in a different light. But just how Leah had managed to pick up the scent was still unclear.

That afternoon – some two months ago – she remembered having taken a nap. This seemingly irrelevant detail suddenly wasn’t irrelevant any longer. Alice had been staying in her bed, even during the time she was supposedly keeping herself away from the human, meaning her scent – pine and crisp dew and something _else_ – had been all over Bella’s sheets and pillows.

_I smelled it myself. For days… before realizing what—who it belonged to…_

Failing to control the shaking in her hands Bella picked up her phone and it almost went flying to the floor. Spasmodically she managed to tap her way to her contacts and hit the call-button next to Alice’s number. Her trepidation mounted – she really, _really_ needed her to pick up the phone this 20th-something time she called. A moment later a sound somewhere between a sigh and sob escaped her and she was flooded with relief, when the simple repeating tone coming through the speaker indicated that the call connected.

“Bella?” Alice’s sweet voice asked after four signals.

“Alice!” Bella exclaimed, failing to keep her voice low, “I need you to come back. Right now.”

Bella had enough forbearance to lower her voice after her initial exclamation; it would suck having to explain to Charlie who she was calling 11 at night in a fit. There was some rustling on the other end of the line.

“What is it?”

“I… I’m not sure. I think someone who shouldn’t know about you does. Where are you? When can you get here?” she barely kept the panicked urgency in her voice at bay.

A small part of her wanted to admonish Alice for leaving her alone for so long and yell out all the shit that had happened in her absence, but she recognized it wasn’t the time or place to bring that up over the phone when God-knows-who could be listening; anyone from the Cullen family, or – God forbid – Leah could be right outside her window for all she knew.

“8 hours maybe, if I leave now. But Bella… I shouldn’t. I-I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

_Screw your feelings!_ Bella thought, and wanted to shout into the receiver but she clamped down on the impulse. It struck her that she should probably place more trust in Alice’s gut-feeling; out of the two of them, she was the seer, after all.

“What do you mean?” She asked, unable to keep her voice from trembling.

“We should meet outside Forks. I… it’s only darkness when I try to see further than that. I leave, I cross into the area and then there’s just… nothing. I don’t even see you. M-my ability hasn’t worked for days!”

With horror Bella realized that Alice was _afraid_. And if a 100-year old _future-seeing **vampire**_ capable of killing someone with the flick of a finger was scared, she understood that that should probably make her want to change her identity and move to another continent.

“I ran…” Alice said quietly then, shame staining her pretty but unusually monotonous voice.

“What?”

“I’m in Denver.”

“Colorado?!”

Making a quick calculation she found that Alice had crossed three states – traveled in excess of 1000 miles – since they last spoke. She wasn’t sure if she should feel hurt that Alice had been _that_ desperate to get away from her, or if she should be impressed.

“I’ve never been without my gift, not like this!” Alice shouted in lieu of an actual confirmation of her location – misinterpreting Bella’s incredulous tone as an accusation, “Whenever I try to look for you, everything beyond the first momentary glance grows muddier and muddier, and then there’s just darkness.”

“Alice—”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone in Forks…”

“Alice, listen. I don’t care what you thought of doing or what you did. I just need you to come here. Or I swear I’ll get in my car and drive to—”

“Don’t!” Alice exclaimed, “Don’t leave your house tonight!” Suddenly the sound of wind howled through the speaker and Bella had to remove the phone from her ear for a second.

“I’ll drive south of Forks, towards Bogachiel State Park. It’s along Route 101. Tomorrow morning?” Bella suggested. She had no idea what kind of state of mind Alice was in, but the park seemed sufficiently far away from any crowds.

It was better driving south of Forks than north, she reasoned. Even if Bella knew the Cullens were decent people now, Alice didn’t – and the last thing any of them needed was Alice going off like a loaded gun if they happened to cross paths for any reason.

“Yes, leave early.” Alice managed in a labored voice, before the call was disconnected.

One quick glance at the clock on her phone, Bella was thankful that Mid-Winter break began the next day, because she was wiped.

////

Bella had a vague memory of visiting the Bogachiel State Park once when she was a kid. She had followed with Charlie, Harry Clearwater, and Billy Black as the trio had gone there on an impromptu fishing trip. The part of the Bogachiel River that ran through the park wasn’t the best fishing spot close-by, she’d heard Harry point out, but the trip was a spontaneous one so the fact that they probably wouldn’t catch something worth keeping didn’t really matter.

Harry had brought Leah with him, and Billy had brought the twins. Together, the kids had all run around and played in the surrounding park area while their fathers were trying their luck with river-fishing. This had been not too long before Bella’s parents divorced and Renée moved Bella and herself across the country, so she figured it must have been in the late summer of 2008, a month or so before she turned seven years old.

She parked her rumbling rusty-red Chevy at one of the assigned spaces and opened the driver side door. She took a moment to just breath in the cold and clean air and enjoy the peace and quiet; this early – it was barely past 9 AM – no other people seemed to have a reason to visit. However, it being the first day of Mid-Winter break people were bound to show up for a refreshing day in the park and its surrounding nature in a few hours.

She began her trek from where she parked her vehicle and down towards the forest and campgrounds; Alice was surely already there, hiding somewhere in the more secluded parts of the park. The sun had risen about two hours earlier so the sky was a bright baby blue and required that Bella squint her eyes – still a bit sleepy – to get a good look at it. There were only a few sparse and thin clouds on the sky.

_The sun might show up after all…_

The park was heavily forested and the thick, looming hemlock trees with their wildly spread crowns quickly shaded Bella from the bright sky and cast her vision in a dusky, green gloom. She wasn’t sure which one she preferred.

She held to the right; if her memory served her right, this little side-road – saw very little traffic and seemed sufficiently secluded. And there – after a few minutes of walking – stood Alice. Obscured from anyone walking past who didn’t know what to look for, to Bella the vampire’s pale face shone like a spotlight through the all-surrounding greenery from behind a shroud of low-hanging lichen.

Bella hurried towards her, making sure to carefully navigate the 50, or so, feet of bushy undergrowth to the side of the beaten path so that she wouldn’t faceplant into the ground first thing. Alice didn’t seem to register her presence at first. Not until she was close enough to throw her arms around the vampire’s small frame and hug her.

Alice stiffened when Bella – having not realized how much she’d missed her friend’s scent – took a deep breath from where she had her nose pressed to the smooth curve of her neck and shoulder.

“Bella…” Alice breathed out, almost as if in relief, and relaxed.

“Alice,” Bella returned and took a step back from her mate to observe her.

She meant to mention just how much she’d missed Alice, but something else drew her attention first.

Alice was dressed in a dark denim jacket with a badly fitting band t-shirt underneath, black jeans which were too long and almost too loose for her slight frame, and a pair of sunglasses. But the oddest thing was that her hair was soaked, and now that Bella thought about it, her own pants and worn, padded suede jacket had moist stains from where they’d touched Alice’s clothes.

“Why are you wet?” she questioned. There had been some rain during the night, but it had stopped hours ago, so that couldn’t be it.

“I… Well, I couldn’t very well show up here fully caked in grime and debris.”

Bella could tell that her mate was still tense and guarded for some reason – even if her words didn’t give that away. She carefully moved her hand up to push Alice’s sunglasses up into her hair, moving a stray clump of wet hair out of the way.

“So, you ran inside someone’s house and borrowed their shower, but didn’t bother drying up?” the human snickered, to which the vampire looked sheepish.

Once her strangely grounding red orbs came into Bella’s view the human subconsciously released a pent-up breath as a heavy weight was lifted off her shoulders.

“Actually, I stood under this waterfall. Just a moment ago.”

As far as unexpected replies came, that one was pretty high up there – and Bella’s wasn’t sure how to react.

“I’ll show you sometime, it was quite beautiful actually,” Alice gave a hesitant smile, but the crease in her brow was persistent, ”For now, there’s something we need to talk about.”

But Alice didn’t make any indication that she was going to initiate, and Bella was at a loss. She wasn’t sure in which end to begin: the Cullen family; Leah knowing about vampires; Bella’s talk with Carlisle; or Alice’s lack of self-control – every single one was both equally important and equally unsavory to start unpacking.

“I talked with the Cullens,” Bella decided, trying to keep her voice casual.

“And what did they say?”

Alice’s tone was measured, and she flicked her eyes to staunchly meet Bella’s.

“You didn’t see any of it?” Bella questioned. Alice’s eyes hardened.

“I told you I’m blind. I saw you approach the tall, muscular one at school which possibly led to the two of you meeting up later. At a parking lot. _Alone,_ ” something dark came through Alice’s expression then and she grit her teeth.

“Right, right,” Bella put her hands up in a pacifying gesture, “Okay, so you saw no details. Does that mean you don’t see _anything_ with your gift now?”

“Practically so, yes. I’ve never had my gift taken away like this, and as I’m sure you can tell, I’m not a fan.”

“I… Well, I met their leader. That was probably what you saw, the glimpse of the parking lot. I went to visit him,” Bella confessed, and Alice gave a quiet growl – Bella had never seen her so riled up before, and _she_ wasn’t a fan of _that_ , “at the hospital. I… told him about you—”

“Why would you do that?!” Alice burst out, taking a step back from Bella and fighting the urge to crouch down defensively. She hadn’t felt this out of her element since she woke up after her transformation, like her control over her fight-or-flight instinct had been left in the responsibility of someone else. Someone or some _thing_ who only had self-preservation by any means necessary in mind.

“Because I love you, Alice! He wanted to help us!” Bella hollered back, and Alice flinched.

“You love me…?”

“I told you that before, remember? I do,” Bella reinforced, and took a careful step towards Alice again and lightly stroked her icy cold left cheek with her hand, “He offered to help us. We were wrong about them, they’re _kind_. Sympathetic. Their leader, Carlisle, he’s a doctor, and remember how we thought they only used that as an easy access to blood? Turns out he lives for his family and for helping sick people.”

“If they’re so amazing, why do you bother with me?” Alice sneered.

“I just told you, stupid. I love you. You’re everything to me,” Bella said and sort of wanted to smack Alice on the arm for being so obstinate, but she didn’t want to risk getting her arm torn off, “They call themselves ‘vegetarians’ – apparently an inside joke – but the point is that they don’t drink human blood. At all. They drink animal blood, like we suspected. And according to Carlisle it helps them to temper some of their instincts, to see each other as people rather than competition, to tie ties of love and respect with each other.”

Alice frowned, trying to compute what she was being told. She had tasted animal blood that evening when she set out to do so, to verify Bella’s theory. A mountain goat deep in the Olympic National Park had fallen victim to her, and she’d barely gotten the musty blood down. It had tasted like how she suspected putrid food tasted to humans. She’d ended up spitting much of it out, even if she near-instantaneously felt how it reinvigorated her, slaked her animalistic hunger – the taste had simply been vile.

Then – incensed at a failed hunt and having been denied full sustenance, with no other options her blood-crazed instincts deemed worthy close-by – she had steered her course back to the only place in Forks that was both safe and could offer her what her instincts craved. Bella’s room. The rest is history. But suffice it to say that Alice was extremely skeptical of the Cullens living solely off such foul blood.

“He also explained that what you’re _feeling_ ,” Bella continued, trying to carefully mask her explaining of Alice’s own emotions to her in neutral terms so as to not provoke the vampire further, “is your instincts going haywire from having other vampires encroach on your territory.”

“I don’t have a territory. I don’t care about the rest of Forks,” Alice snapped back callously.

They both knew that wasn’t true; Alice because she’d consciously refused to hunt anywhere near the small rural town to not risk that she attacked anyone Bella knew, and Bella because the vampire had asked her about her friends at school, her thoughts and opinions about the town she’d been raised in for seven years, the people she’d met since coming back – genuinely curious on who they were and what they meant to Bella. But that was before the Cullens had appeared.

“I mean—” a particularly loud bird screeched loudly somewhere to Bella’s right, derailing her.

_Even the birds are warning you to back the hell away from this topic…_

A mildly hysterical bubble of laughter almost escaped her, what with the wildlife around her apparently having more forbearance than herself.

“Me,” it just fell out, and Alice startled as if Bella had statically shocked her – which somehow spurred her to shovel her way down even deeper, “It’s me. You’re possessive of me, even if you don’t mean to. I didn’t notice at first, when it was just us. But after _they_ moved here…”

Alice’s nostrils flared, and if someone had forced Bella to speak her truth at just that moment she really, very likely, would have confessed to being a hair’s width away from shitting her pants.

“You don’t own me, Alice,” she mumbled, and luckily, she was looking down on her shoes – submerged in the field of moss – because Alice’s expression went from irritation to bewilderment, and then settled into a mask stewing anger. The rapid transition of emotions would have sent Bella running had she seen it.

Bella looked up only to find the end-result, and her pulse practically droned out her own voice:

“And I know that you know that. I just fear that maybe not all parts of you know that, _all the time_ , you know?”

The crease was back between Alice’s brows, and Bella couldn’t help but hold her breath as the anger on her mate’s face gradually wore off until she looked almost…

_Relaxed…?_

“I—” they both began at the same time, Alice interrupting another case of verbal diarrhea and Bella interrupting something much calmer and more insightful.

“I know that you don’t like it. I don’t either. I don’t want to feel like I can’t let you out of my sight for more than a minute, for fear that another vampire will… wi-will take you from me. I never felt this way during your childhood, I stayed far away from you for months at a time—”

“I really wanted you to visit more, you know.”

“I did too. But I knew that I wasn’t good for you, and I still know that. But now I don’t,” Alice’s face twisted in distress, her voice suddenly thick and struggling with emotion, “now I think I don’t care as much.”

“Carlisle,” Bella said and hated how she had to bring up his name again in the middle of this oddly cathartic conversation, “said that you subconsciously feel threatened by them.”

“That’s probably true. It’s like— Ever since I came back into your life, when I saw you again with my own eyes and not just through glassy visions for the first time in years… I never wanted to leave again lest I’d never have another moment of peace. When I could finally be honest with you, _they_ showed up, a-and… everything went out of control.”

Bella hadn’t seen Alice this down to Earth in a good long while, and it was indescribably refreshing. And scary in its own way. Clearly, Alice had reclaimed more of her mental faculties apart from the moody and paranoid version of herself that Bella had been forced to get used to over the last few weeks.

“Why did you run away then?” Bella asked, trying to figure out how Alice’s inability to stay away from her rhymed with running over 1000 miles from Forks.

“I only intended to leave the immediate area to calm down and regain control. As I was running for Seattle my ability stopped working, you disappeared, and I almost ran back. But I was paralyzed by this _dread_ when I realized that every future in which I tried to backtrack into Forks was steeped in a hazy darkness that I couldn’t see past.”

Bella mused to herself that witnessing a psychic vampire practically falling apart in front of her was a very strange experience, but what could she do other than to place a hand consolingly on Alice’s arm while the vampire ventilated her frustrations and worries? Nothing in her life had prepared her any further for this.

“I only saw fractions of you, glimpses. Before the same darkness settled over those, too. This—whatever it is that is blinding me, I felt it… coming closer somehow, the more I tried. And I panicked. I only stopped running because… I, when I needed to—”

“It’s okay Alice,” Bella said, not wanting to hear what she knew Alice was going to say; when she’d needed to _eat_. When she’d likely _killed_ someone.

“I don’t know what’s wro—" Alice interrupted herself and glanced towards the path Bella had come from, “Someone’s coming. We need to leave.”

Bella was half-tempted to protest, saying they only had to quiet down for a while until whoever was coming their way had walked past, but then she remembered that Alice wasn’t all the way okay and it was needlessly stupid to risk a stranger’s life.

“There’s a clearing down by the riverbank. Should be,” Bella took a moment to orient herself, replaying a memory of running around with Leah, Rachel and Rebecca at the river shore next to their fishing fathers, and pointed through the dense forest, “that way. A couple of minutes’ walking.”

The part of the river she was planning on leading them too was shallow enough that there was probably no one there fishing – judging by Billy’s and Harry’s aggravation from her memory – and if she remembered correctly it was secluded from any cabins and houses by a thick wall of trees. And Alice would hear if anyone was coming their way, as well. It should do nicely with giving them some privacy.

Alice tilted her head, checking for other people close-by. Finding no other sign of any humans or predators she picked Bella up – much to the younger woman’s chagrin – and with a burst of speed much too dizzying for Bella to keep up with they were suddenly standing at the borderline of the forest and a small patch of grass preceding the open clearing in front of them. Some tree-saplings were shooting out of the ground between the other end of the clearing and the coarse riverbank a further stone’s throw away, giving the little clearing a sense of seclusion.

When Alice put her down, Bella shakily took a few steps out into the clearing – the trip there had certainly been quicker than expected. She again had to squint against the bright sky now that they were out of the gloomy forest. Glancing up, she saw the sun peeking valiantly around the edge of a cloud, suddenly bathing the clearing and Bella in bright light.

Its rays warmed Bella, but this time of the year they weren’t strong enough to make any meaningful impact on the chilly climate of the Washington Pacific-coastal countryside. It would only last for a few minutes before more clouds floating across the sky gobbled up the warm rays again. She looked back at Alice who glanced warily around her and peeked up at the sky. Bella wasn’t sure what she was thinking about, but finally she seemed to settle on something and stepped out from the canopy of trees she was hiding under.

Bella could only let out a gasp at first, worried her eyes were deceiving her, when Alice stepped out into the sunlight and she had to physically shield her eyes with her hand for a moment at the dazzling prism of colors suddenly radiating of off Alice’s face and hands. The initial blinding effect only lasted for a few seconds, and Bella lowered her hand to take in what she was seeing. She was sure her jaw was hanging down onto the grassy ground.

She could only breathe out a stunned, questioning sound, before her brain – seemingly without her own volition – steered her back to Alice’s stock-still frame, all the while staring at her in wonder. It required confirmation, this mesmerizing thing she was witnessing – this multitude of small diamonds that appeared to be imbedded in the pale creamy skin of Alice’s face.

As her mate breathed and her features naturally shifted, the sparkling effect did too – her mate’s skin glimmering as if someone had spread the finest powdered crystal all over it. As if she was draped in a skin-hugging, diamond-imbedded veil of the finest, most translucent fabric.

“You’re beautiful…” she breathed. She could only gasp her words out, trying to understand how and why Alice’s skin was sparkling but not knowing in which end of the concept to begin.

She couldn’t help but lift her hand to Alice’s cheek, stroking the chilly skin and idly wondering if her hand would be smudged in shimmering dust when she pulled it away. She did briefly check, and there was nothing, at which Alice released an airy chuckle. Bella did a double-take back to her face – she hadn’t heard Alice chuckle so freely in weeks. There had been so much tension surrounding them both the past month and a half that Bella had almost forgotten what the usual cheerful Alice sounded like.

She stroked the vampire’s cheek again, tracing her fingers up to her temple, and then down to the jawline all the while staring at her. Alice stood still, as if carved from rock, unflinchingly meeting her dazed stare. As she reached Alice’s delicately shaped jawbone her thumb swiped under and up the vampire’s chin, to stop just below her pale red bottom lip.

A trepidation-filled inhalation through her nose matched the sudden spark – the challenge – in the vampire’s saturated red eyes. Said perceived challenge caused Bella to shift the focus of her vision to those pale red lips. But she wasn’t sure she should be looking at Alice like this – not that the slight vampire seemed to object.

Bella had a good six inches on Alice’s height, and she distantly reflected how she seemed to have tilted her head down—were they suddenly standing much closer to each other, requiring the adjustment in posture?

“Bella—”

“I want to kiss you,” she gushed out and then almost physically recoiled from how horribly embarrassing she sounded.

_WHAT are you doing, Bella?! Abort!_

She was at a complete loss on how to justify her want to map them under her fingers, much less with other parts of her – she was practically overcome by the urge. She’d just never seen something so breathtakingly beautiful in her entire life – which perhaps didn’t speak too much in her favor because she hadn’t witnessed much beauty in her life _period._

_Those perfect lips situated in that perfect **sparkling** face, with those perfect red eyes._

And she haphazardly did; the pad of her thumb trekked slightly upwards from where her hand was oddly cradling Alice’s jaw, until it stroked along the seam of Alice’s bottom lip. The sounds of the river; the birds chirping; the rustling of the breeze through the saplings behind them, had all faded out into a muted buzzing at the back of Bella’s conscious mind.

Then, she caught herself and let her hand drop down from Alice’s face. Mouth dry, she tried to let out some type of mumbled apology – or at the very least an explanation – but the odd look on Alice’s face put a stop to her.

_God, what must she be thinking about me?_

Her brain had done a complete 180° and was screaming at her to back away and pray that she could salvage the train wreck she’d turned their conversation into. Really, salvaging it into any scenario – she felt she couldn’t afford to be choosy right now – in which Alice didn’t find her a slimy and pathetically awkward teenager was preferable.

_It’d probably count as a miracle at this point._

“Bella. Don’t fret,” the vampire then said, and the corner of her lips quirked up – as if she was suppressing some sort of amusement. At what, Bella had no clue – there was nothing amusing about what she had just done.

If it hadn’t been for her roiling mind and heavy, pounding pulse drowning out everything around her but Alice, she would have snarked out something like how it was nice that at least one of them found the situation funny. And she very nearly managed, before Alice’s denim-clad right arm circled around her waist – its still-wet chill, further accentuated by the cold weather and Alice’s lack of body heat, seeping through her old and worn out jacket. And she pulled Bella close, closer than they’d been standing before.

Forcing herself to stop thinking about kissing or touching Alice had limited effect, and pretty much every neural pathway in her nervous-system went on a collective, millisecond-long hiatus when Alice practically snuggled her face into the top of Bella’s half-open jacket.

_Oh, my fucking God, oh, okay wh—_

Alice exhaled, and the cold breath spread out over the top of Bella’s chest – in-between the layers of her jacket and shirt like a blizzard – before Alice gently placed her lips on the joint center of Bella’s collarbone in a kiss.

The reeling human couldn’t fully grasp what was going on – the only thing running through her mind being that Alice had her lips on her bare skin – not because she was incapable, but because she was interrupted by an animalistic snarl from somewhere across the river loud enough to snap her out of it. And just like _that,_ their moment was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3
> 
> (P.S.: if you find any glaring structural issues or plot-holes in this chapter, don’t hesitate to point them out. I was practically pulling my hair by the end to keep all the threads of the plot in-check, and to keep the progression in the chapter realistic – meaning I moved around many paragraphs maaaaaany times, and eventually you get blind to your own words.)


	16. (Or just very sharp teeth)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit later than, uh, promised. I’m just gonna blame it on poor self-control (yes - I played 60 hours of Starbound in the last 3 weeks, and yes – mistakes were made).  
> Hope you guys enjoy this chapter, at least! :D
> 
> Thank you to M (I know you’ll read this eventually, and you deserve all the thanks!) for your very thoughtful suggestions on the structure of this chapter!

Like a switch had been flipped Alice’s entire aura shifted instantaneously. Because of how she’d just held her face and lips pressed to Bella’s collarbone – luxuriating in the warmth and privilege of being so close to her – the human woman wasn’t at the right angle to get a good look at just how vividly Alice’s expression changed. Utter dread would have been what she’d experienced at a glimpse of the demonic fury that from one second to the next contorted her mate’s face.

She attempted to turn around and check what the hell kind of animal could be growling and snarling at such volume, but Alice suddenly grabbed her arm in a much too tight grip – to which she yelped – and jerked Bella’s form towards and to the side of her, simultaneously using the momentum to propel herself forward and in front of the shaken and confused human.

Bella stumbled from the power which Alice pulled her forward, and while tumbling to the ground she turned enough to absorb most of the impact on her side and hip – trying to see what was going on behind her while avoiding landing on her stomach and getting her breath knocked out. Skidding to a stop on the frosted grassy ground, she flipped to her back – bracing herself on her arms, just to see Alice blurring out in the direction of the two large shapes barreling down towards them from across the river-bend.

She squinted to make out what exactly they were, but before her eyes could focus on their position at the opposite riverbank, they were suddenly much closer to the pair – moving in speeds Bella’s eyes couldn’t track – spraying water behind them as they seemed to rocket towards her. No more than a second later Alice’s form materialized again in the middle of the river just past the shallow part, synched in time for when one of the shapes moved up next to her.

The sound of Bella’s gasp was swallowed up by the deafening crack exploding forth when Alice collided with the bulky shape. Her hand flew up to her mouth in horrified shock as the bright silvery form was sent flying like a projectile away from the vampire – shooting like a bizarre skipping stone across the water before plowing through the far end of the muddy riverbank from where it had first appeared.

Before Bella could consciously stop herself, she was up and running towards the commotion 120 or so yards away from her. She had barely taken ten steps before another creature solidified next to Alice and sprung forward on its hindlegs, in a mindlessly berserk flail. If it hadn’t been for the adrenaline hammering through her system, fracturing her attention, she likely would have seen the true shape of the beasts much earlier; giant wolves. But maybe the adrenaline was a good thing, too; she surely would have fallen into a submissive heap on the ground at that very same revelation otherwise.

Alice was being attacked by giant wolves, and she just seemed to have sent one flying across the entire wide, curved breadth of the Bogachiel like nothing, probably turning the rabid animal to a paste upon the rough ground.

“ _ALICE!_ ” she frantically grabbed fistfuls of her own hair, trying to channel her desperation into something. Already winded from the intense adrenaline-rush and the mediocre physical condition she was in, she put her all into it and ran towards the riverside bordering the clearing in which they’d stood just moments ago.

The huge wolf who had sprung towards Alice – this one a darker grey color – slammed its massive front legs and paws down on the much smaller shape that was Alice, and Bella garbled out a horrorstricken sound while maniacally leaping across the clearing.

There seemed to be a wild struggle and flailing of limbs, judging by the giant discs of water cutting through the air around the two forms.

Bella thought for sure that she was having the worst nightmare of her life when she fully took in the size of the feral animal attacking her mate; it was a wolf alright, but it was as large as a horse with a wither-height close to six feet, and at least four times the size of a typical wolf. Its paws were bigger than Bella’s entire face, and the creature probably exceeded 15 feet in length from its nose to the tip of its tail.

She had difficulty making out the movements of the fighters because of how their bodies repeatedly went out of focus, and it became apparent that the wolves weren’t just massive specimens of their genus clearly hooked up on steroids; they were decidedly supernatural if they could keep up with the Earth’s factual apex predator.

The enormous beast lunged at Alice with a maw filled with sharp teeth, the canines six inches long with a jaw strength that could maul hardened steel, and Bella was simultaneously impressed and sick to her stomach with fear when Alice sidestepped the bite, and used the scruff on the wolf’s neck to acrobatically wheel herself up onto its back.

By now Bella had skidded to a halt at the water’s edge; torn between staying a distance away as Alice battled some sort of supernatural beast or running out in the thigh-deep water to try to help in some way. The latter idea was quickly squashed when Bella witnessed at the far focus-point of her sight the wolf Alice had sent flying just 30 seconds earlier stand back up. It was still far away to make it impossible for Bella to make out its injuries, but she noticed how it seemed to only shake itself before it burst into a sprint towards Alice and the other wolf again.

“Watch out!” she cried, trying her best to warn the vampire of the incoming threat.

A second later, Alice – still perched on top of the dark grey wolf, which reared back on its haunches trying to throw her off – shaped her hand like a katar by pressing her fingers tightly together and jabbed it into the shoulder of the large animal.

The beast yowled out in agony, and Bella could hear the cracking of bones even from where she was standing. The animal, now almost fully sitting up on its hindlegs flopped backwards to escape Alice’s hand buried in its back, and the vampire used the momentum to kick herself away from the yawping, whining animal – flinging its half-prone upside-down body into the trees next to the far side of the river like a deflated football.

Alice either hadn’t heard Bella’s warning or she had been too caught up with the fight to care for it. That became evident when just a moment later – before Alice had even landed in the water from her flip off the wolf she’d just fought – the silver-coated wolf slammed into her, repaying Alice in spades from earlier. Like a missile warhead Alice zoomed past Bella in a speed unimaginable to the poor human.

“Jesus Christ!!” she shouted and ducked; her reflexes much too slow to keep up with the speed Alice was launched through the air just a few feet to the side of her. She thought herself lucky that she hadn’t been in the way, completely convinced the force behind Alice’s uncontrolled movement would have taken her head off and likely shattered every bone in her body.

The splintering of wood alerted Bella that Alice had crashed into the forest around the clearing further up from the river. The silvery wolf turned its attention to Bella, the intensity of its yellow eyes and practically vibrating frame sending her into a tailspin of panic. Escaping to safety, escaping _anywhere_ , was all she could coherently think about, but as she attempted and failed to scramble up from the muddy riverbank, she turned her head around: Alice had felled at least five trees when smashing through them.

Her brain wasn’t built to work with what was happening in front of her; the speed of the two fighting creatures; the sheer strength they both employed; the millisecond or faster switches in tempo. Reacting to all those things required a reaction-time physically impossible to achieve with a human nervous system. Before she was done processing a thought or executing one reflexive move, the two figurative gods fighting in front of her had already executed ten moves of their own or covered a hundred yards of land, and the tempo of the brawl had been completely flipped on its head.

And so it was this time as well: before Bella had even fully turned her head in place towards where Alice had crash-landed, her vampire zoomed out of the clearing again to meet the hulking bright grey beast halfway between it and Bella. She scored a mean right-hook to its head, judging by the clapping sound of marble-hard skin against supernaturally dense bone and the way the entire wolf careened to the left into the riverbed of the shallow water – producing a crater in the soft ground and spraying up water and mud.

Bella crawled on all fours – having failed to get up on her legs because of her thundering heart and violently shaking legs – up and away from the fighting just 30 feet away from her, the single thought of escaping to safety bouncing around in her head. A few more cracks and dull thuds were heard, interspersed with hissing, growling, and snarling both from the wolf and from Alice. Completely exhausted – her inner response-system practically frayed – Bella sunk down on the ground and flopped over like a dying fish.

She lifted her head in time to witness the roaring beast – now back on all fours and locked in struggle with Alice yet again – swipe its massive right arm and paw at her mate, who failed to evade the attack entirely.

With a screeching sound loud enough to cause momentary hearing loss in Bella, the vicious beast’s claws hooked into the side of Alice’s body desperately twisting mid-air, slamming her down into the muddy riverbed and rending deep furrows into her marble skin. Like a feral lioness Alice released a sound somewhere between a roar and a snarl and twisted out from the massive beast’s hold just as it launched for her body with its massive wide-open jaws.

With strength and determination previously unavailable to her, Bella flung herself up from the ground and stumbled towards her wounded mate. Something in her rear-vision piqued her attention however, and with a sense of absolute, inescapable doom she saw another two overgrown wolves emerge from the same wooded area that the original two wolves had come from, some 400 yards in the distance. In a blurry unit they began a sprint towards Bella, Alice, and the colossal, practically frothing, silvery wolf.

“ _NO!!!_ ” she shrieked so primally that it stripped her vocal-chords raw, somewhere and somehow garbling out details loudly and coherently enough for Alice to flip herself upright with a gravity-defying kick to the wolf’s nether jaw – flinging the beast up in the air and away from her.

Then – before she could even blink – Alice was next to her, picking her up, and setting off.

Their surroundings blended together in a blur of browns and greens. Saliva and bile welled up in her mouth, and she desperately swallowed it down and closed her eyes. She tried to focus on her breathing – which was easier said than done on account of her agitated state – but the speed Alice was moving in made it hard to feel like she was getting a proper lungful of air.

She was clinging to the small vampire’s neck with her face peeking over Alice’s left shoulder. Their surroundings may have been a blur of color to her, but as she squinted one eye open, she could clearly make out the three wolves tailing them – the large silver-grey one leading the chase with an almost equally big russet wolf and a much sleeker grey-and-black spotted wolf trailing behind it. All three of them filled with the single-minded purpose of obliterating their quarry.

Their two new pursuers were struggling to keep up, slipping and tumbling over themselves as Alice made deft turns and feints through the seemingly never-ending greenery in an unsuccessful attempt to shake them.

Bella had never really given much thought to how she would die; somehow that had never seemed like a pressing matter for the 17-year old, painfully ordinary girl Bella perceived herself to be. Not entirely unbidden came Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” to Bella’s mind as she practically hung across Alice’s shoulder while Death’s rabidly slobbering maw of javelin-sharp incisors steadily inched closer.

It was her favorite poem. All things given, it would have made much more sense if desire had ended up killing her, what with being _involved_ with a vampire, and yet it seemed ice – in its figurative sense – would be her end.

Having given up on trying to keep her eyes closed while staring death in the eye she saw the two wolves struggling to keep up with them skid to a stop, shooting up chunks of the moss and plant-covered earth with their massive paws as they did – and like that, they were out of Bella’s field of vision. The silvery wolf barked loudly, angrily – now less than a stone’s throw behind them – in response to its companions ceasing their chase, but kept focus with its pursuit, determined to not let Alice and Bella get away.

Alice ran the two of them up a slope, departing from the relatively flat ground of the dense forest, to thicker uphill terrain. The incline of the slope became increasingly steep, and one of Alice’s hands came up to steadfastly press Bella’s head against her shoulder to prevent the human’s neck from snapping from the whiplash, as she veered in a sharp 90-degree turn.

She shot them up in the air – the claws of the wild beast’s muscular front legs hooking into her foot, shredding the leather of her shoe like paper and sending the two escapees off-course. With the sickening feeling of her stomach detaching from inside of her, Bella had a flashback to when Renée convinced 13-year old her to ride the Sky Diver attraction at Castles N’ Coasters in Phoenix.

Granted, that had been a 300-feet _drop_ towards the ground instead of a 200-feet _jump_ up into the dense crowns of the ancient trees in the Olympic National Park, _through_ the vibrant greens of moss- and lichen-clad twigs.

Like whips, they tore at clothes and slashed at exposed skin. Like a different set of teeth – not belonging to any animal or creature – they bit into Bella’s flesh. She did her best to shield her face – distantly observing that Alice seemed to angle her own body just so, in order to absorb the most vicious brunt of the forest’s onslaught. By the speed they were ascending, she barely had time to do so before Alice had them stumbling onto the limb of a tree.

Bella groggily looked around once Alice’s hand let up its hold – only to yelp, close her eyes and cling even more firmly to Alice’s small but absurdly strong frame, once she realized they were balancing on a sturdy branch of a gigantic cedar.

Judging by her vertigo and the dozens of miles of sprawling forest surrounding them in all directions they were some 200 feet off the ground. Alice had picked a particularly tall tree amongst the rest of them – millions of trees, their canopies creating a dense billowing shroud of green as far as Bella could see.

She sobbed out her vampire’s name, throat clenched tightly from barely regulated panic. Alice attempted to let go of her – much to Bella’s immediate struggle, when in the strictest interest of self-preservation, she tried to cling to the rock-steady form of Alice’s body with everything she had. Her feeble attempts were just as pointless as they seemed, and she was easily discarded against the thick trunk of the tree.

“Don’t look down,” Alice instructed, to which Bella grasped and locked her arms around a neighboring branch to keep her balance. And just like someone telling you not to think about pink elephants and expecting you not to, she looked down.

Their hunter was snarling and barking down on the ground, circling the tree and rabidly trying to clamber up the trunk, completely zoned in on its target no matter how physically impossible it was to reach at the moment. An hour ago, Bella had never thought she’d feel such personal and all-encompassing relief that wolves were bad at climbing trees.

Alice was standing indecisively between Bella and the dipping, thinning end of the limb they were occupying – her harrowed eyes flickering between Bella and the wolf on the ground. What was left of her clothes after being shredded by three and a half inches long, wickedly sharp claws hung in tatters from her slight body – revealing more of it than Bella currently wanted to see.

The exhausted and bleary-eyed human tried not to look at the three parallel, inch-wide furrowed gashes – oddly void of any blood – starting just under Alice’s right arm and curving to end somewhere on her lower back.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Bella demanded in a shrill, hoarse voice – her head spinning, knees on the verge of giving out from total mental and physical fatigue. Her entire body felt like one open pulsing wound.

“I don’t know,” Alice gritted out, crouched up and rigidly holding her right arm – still covered in gore from when it had been impaled into the back of one of the beasts – to her wounded side.

With a surprised breath sucked in through clenched teeth, Bella grabbed the top of her own arm as a stinging pain shot through it – thinking it was an insect bite. It wasn’t, and Alice’s reaction proved that. Her eyes homed in on Bella’s hand that was now smeared with blood. Their half-baked surge up into the treetop had, indeed, sliced wounds into Bella’s arms.

Her dizziness was bad enough without the sticky red residue smearing her fingers; the metallic smell of it wafting up from her hand and fingers; the possibility that she had a deep gash in her arm leaking blood; that even if the wound itself wasn’t life-threatening, the company she kept could suddenly prove to be. She swallowed down another wave of bile rising in her throat – she was sure to fall to a certain death if she allowed herself to drop to her knees and heave. Trembling, she didn’t dare look at the wounds in question and away from Alice’s face.

The beast below them suddenly roared and body-checked the thick trunk, shaking the entire tree and almost tipping Bella’s carefully maintained balance into a nose-dive to the ground – interrupting Alice’s obsessive focus on Bella’s blood-smeared hand.

Bella whimpered; it was clear that the beast had intelligence unmatched by its supposed namesake – trying to bring the tree down when it couldn’t climb up it. Alice snarled and wrenched her attention away from Bella, blurring out of place before the human could grasp what was going on. A sharp thud and loud pained whine were heard, followed by the groaning of shattering and felling trees.

Suddenly Alice was back – closer to Bella than before, and the barely coherent human instinctively backed up further towards the trunk she was balancing against. Neither Alice nor any of the Cullens had explained to Bella how a vampire’s current level of thirst could be deciphered through the shade of their eye color, but Bella knew that Alice’s now pitch-black eyes magnetized to her bloody arm were bad news. Possessed by a bloodthirst so severe it felt like she’d swallowed burning coal, Alice inched closer to Bella.

“Alice,” a new voice called out, when Bella was completely cornered between Alice’s uncharacteristically menacing frame and the cedar-tree’s thick trunk just a second later.

Alice gave a surprised grunt and whipped her head in the direction of the sound. A vampire she hadn’t seen before was standing there; average height, well-sculpted but of average build; as alluringly beautiful as was typical for their species; with blonde hair and golden eyes. She growled in warning.

“Let her go,” Carlisle said, completely unbothered by Alice’s rumbling chest and stock-still frame ready to spring into action in a millisecond. Bella groggily looked away from Alice and towards Carlisle, spots of gray flickering at the edges of her vision.

“I’m gonna…” the human yawned before her body went slack and her knees gave out.

////

Alice snatched her up before Bella could even hit the branch she’d been balancing on; pulling the chilled, sweaty body flush to her own.

“Alice,” Carlisle warned again, “You don’t want to do this. Let her go.”

The Cullen-patriarch – perched on a great limb of a neighboring tree – cautiously took a few steps towards Alice’s half-crouched form, centering his position so that he could leap straight towards Alice to stop her if need be.

“Stay _away!_ ” the cornered vampire snarled.

“You will kill her,” Carlisle urged and reached out towards the odd pair he’d taken upon himself to help, “Give her to me. I can help you—”

“NO!” Alice roared, only fully taking in and reacting to the concept of Bella dying, without realizing that it would be by her own hands.

“Both of you. I will take care of her. The wolves that are chasing you will not give up, but the park eventually borders the Puget Sound if you head east from here. They’ll lose your scent once you dive below water,” Carlisle continued as if he hadn’t just been snarled in the face by a rampaging vampire.

There was a flicker of awareness in Alice’s eyes that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not well-practiced with persuading blood-crazed vampires to return to their senses; the real Alice was fighting her way back – attempting to wrestle back control of her own body and mind from the monstrous id of her baser instincts.

“She’ll be safe with me. I’m a doctor. And the wolves can’t touch me or my family so long as Bella is alive. If she dies, however, we will all perish,” he said, trying to appeal to the inherently dominant sense of self-preservation ruling every vampire.

If the Cullens were found connected to any human in the area dying, the uneasy treaty they had with the Quileute-tribe would be void and they would be free game for the Native-tribe’s strange shapeshifting warriors – the wolves. And fairly so, in Carlisle’s opinion. His family would end up destroyed one way or another, even if they could defend themselves against some of the wolves by whatever measure of lethality required, because many more adolescents than the Cullens could handle carried the shapeshifting-gene back at the Reservation. Only five of them had actively triggered their transformations – by the Cullens moving back to Forks, no doubt – but should things come to a head and a violent confrontation be unavoidable more members of the tribe would surely phase as well.

Even if they managed to steer clear of any due attention – by pure luck, should be added – there was a very real risk that the Volturi’s agents could be drawn to the area if rumors spread about a pack of giant wolves roaming the forests of rural Washington. Not only would it carry supremely bad consequences for any humans in the area; should The Guard arrive to find said wolves battling it out with a rabid vampire, the tribe, Alice, Carlisle’s own family, and most importantly Bella would be in great trouble.

“She’s _mine_ ,” Alice said quietly, the threatening tone not going unnoticed by Carlisle.

“And I will not take her from you,” he reassured, “I don’t drink human blood.”

Further clarity returned to the tiny vampire’s dangerously black eyes, and she glanced down at the unconscious human in her arms:

 _Mate,_ she flicked them back up towards Carlisle, _intruder!_

In very rapid succession, she repeated the motion – knowing somewhere deep within herself that if the vampire opposite her was an intruder, his motives weren’t antagonistic. Flickers of him suturing the wound on her mate’s arm – seemingly without reacting to the blood seeping from it – screened before her inner eye and told her as much.

_Stranger._

The strange man and a smaller woman – she, too, a vampire – looking at a sleeping Bella, and odd fondness crowning the woman’s face.

_Trusted stranger?_

The clean, blonde man was prepared when she resolutely – almost in a mere twitch of a motion – moved over to him and thrust Bella’s limp body into his arms. No doubt had he seen Alice’s expressive reflection of his character and deduced when she’d finally come back to her senses enough to realize what was best for the unconscious human stuck in the midst of their tug-of-war of wills.

Without a word she leaped down towards the ground and took off in the direction the man had suggested; the smell of the ocean would guide her right. The heady scent of Bella’s blood was aired out from her senses by the musky, pungent smell of the rainforest as she dashed through the greenery.

Carlisle tracked her movements for a few seconds, before he adjusted his grip on the unconscious daughter of Forks’ Chief of Police and sprinted the opposite way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, there’s something like ten BILLION trees in Washington state – who woulda ~~trunk~~ thunk?
> 
> Btw, a katar is a type of dagger. It’s held almost like a pair of brass knuckles, but with a wide straight blade protruding from where your knuckles would be. And then you go stabby-stab with it.


	17. Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I think my apologies for being late on the update is starting to ring hollow at this point buuuuut what the hell: SORRY (again).
> 
> Also, THANK YOU to everyone who’s given kudos and subscribed, and - most importantly – commented. It’s almost at 6k views and I NEVER thought this story would get even a tenth of the attention it’s gotten so far. I really mean it, your thoughts and constructive criticisms or just theories and general feelings about each update inspire me so, so much.

With an undignified snort Bella flew up to a sitting position – jerked back awake by a horrible distorted growl in her dreams. She was sitting on a bed, holding the linen bedspread in a white-knuckled grip. It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the bright room; white-painted walls making it look even bigger than it was by reflecting the copious amount of light that was streaming in through the large panorama window that occupied most of the wall opposite her.

Taking a moment to gather herself she looked around the room; on the wall to her right hung a large piece of dyed fabric depicting some sort of abstract motif that Bella was too tired to understand. The art piece’s warm colors, and the dark brownish-orange of the bedding nicely off-set the room’s stark bright walls and gave it a homey feeling. The view outside the window was amazing, and if Bella hadn’t been so confused as to where she was, she would have properly how the Sol Doc River was separating the Cullens’ back garden from the wilderness of the Olympic rainforest stretching out beyond it.

There was a knock on the half-open door, startling Bella out of her thoughts.

“Isabella?” a soft voice questioned and pushed the door the entire way open.

Bella looked at the woman on the doorstep. Her impossibly soft features set Bella at ease; her kind golden eyes and beautiful heart-shaped face immediately drew the thought of a caring mother to Bella’s mind. The woman’s hair was a rich caramel, billowing down her face to end just below her shoulders, with neat dark brows and soft-looking pale red lips complementing her looks. She reminded Bella of an actress plucked right out of the early Golden Age of Hollywood.

“Who are you?” Bella asked, nervously fiddling with a stray thread on the bedspread she was sitting at.

“I’m Esme Cullen. Rosalie and Emmett’s mother, for all intents and purposes,” the woman replied, and stepped into the room carefully – as if Bella was a skittish animal on the verge of running.

“Oh, uh… what am I doing here? Where am I even?”

“You’re in our home. Carlisle carried you here after… do you remember what happened?”

Bella immediately screwed her eyes shut at the surge of memories and images that fluttered before her inner eyes; giant wolves duking it out with Alice – all of them like vengeful mythological beasts tearing up the nature around them in their fury. One of them shredding through Alice’s rock-hard skin like wrapping-paper – Bella would never forget the screeching sound – and then chasing them across what felt like the entire Olympic Peninsula, slobbering and threatening to tear them both to pieces in an instant. Their flight up an ancient tree in the mountain ranges of the Olympic Natural Park… Alice’s wild expression and dreadful eyes – like bottomless pits of tar.

“I’m sorry for bringing that back up,” Esme apologized and hurried closer to the human to attempt comfort – to which Bella startled again, causing Esme to halt, “And I’m sorry you had to experience all that in the first place. Carlisle gave me the gist of what happened.”

_Carlisle!_ Bella thought, just realizing that he had been there too.

She could briefly remember how he called out Alice’s name, standing on a neighboring branch a few paces away from Bella and her crazed vampire mate. She subconsciously glanced down to her left arm, vaguely remembering that it had been bleeding.

“Seven stitches total; Carlisle fixed you up while you were unconscious,” Esme supplied, and at Bella’s frightened expression at being in a room with a vampire while sporting fresh wounds, the motherly figure added, “I may not be quite Carlisle in terms of control, but you’re perfectly safe with me. I’m not going to attack you Isabella.”

Bella couldn’t do much but take the woman’s word for it anyhow; the fight she’d witnessed a few hours earlier had proved to her just how powerless she was compared to vampires and whatever those enormous beasts were.

“How long was I out?” she asked, trying to keep the trembling out of her voice. Assuming it was still February 20th, it couldn’t have been too long because the sky outside was still bright – if cloudy, per normal Forks’ weather.

“About two hours. It’s just past 1.”

It was hard for Bella to wrap her head around just how much had happened in the past three hours – how much had _gone wrong_ in that time. And maybe she’d never fully understand everything that _did_ happen.

There was another knock on the doorframe, and Bella glanced up to see Carlisle walking into the room. His lips were bent up in a kind, understanding smile.

“I heard you were awake,” he said and walked up to Esme, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Bella was momentarily shocked at how _normal_ they looked together.

“Where’s Alice?” Bella asked, simultaneously craving to know where her mate was and dreading to hear the answer.

“I’m not sure. I told her to run for water – to hide her trail from the wolves in case they were going after her again. I suspect she’s in the area around Seattle.”

“I need to see her...!” Bella let out frantically with no real idea on how she’d get to Seattle with her car still parked over at the Park. Carlisle easily grabbed the human’s hand to steady her as she swung herself off the bed and almost toppled to the floor.

“And you will. She’ll be back. But you’re exhausted and should rest some more. Esme and I cooked up something for you to eat downstairs. Then we might have some business to attend to,” Carlisle calmed her. Bella’s rumbling stomach at the mention of food distracted her enough from asking what ‘business’ Carlisle was referring to.

The two vampires guided Bella to the ground floor of the spacious home and into the dining room.

“You guys didn’t have to do all this…” Bella mumbled guiltily at the sight of fine cutlery and a porcelain plate stacked high with pancakes.

“It’s no bother, really,” Carlisle said, smiled kindly, and motioned for Bella to sit down and dig in, “We both enjoy cooking, but we rarely get a chance to indulge.”

“Oh, right. You don’t eat, uh, normal food?”

“Can’t digest it,” the doctor confirmed.

Bella self-consciously cut out a large bite of the crispy pancakes dripping with melted butter and maple syrup and put it in her mouth. She couldn’t clamp down on a satisfied moan at the rich, savory taste and fluffy texture of it – any worry that the Cullens couldn’t cook because of their diet flying from her mind.

Esme clapped her hands together and squealed happily at Bella’s obvious approval of their first traditional American pancakes cooked in the last 40 years, while Carlisle only smiled warmly. She blurred away to the kitchen to grab a glass and some milk for Bella after asking what the human preferred to drink with her meal.

“How did you know to help us?” Bella asked when Esme had returned with her drink.

“After our talk in the hospital yesterday my family settled on helping the two of you as well as… certain restrictions allowed. I… Pardon me for the intended breach of privacy, but I came to check up on you this morning. You weren’t home and your scent was trailing away up the street. Chalk it up to intuition, but something didn’t feel right – so I tracked you, and then I watched from a distance when the fight broke out,” Carlisle explained. If it wasn’t for the fact that he might very well have saved both Bella’s and Alice’s lives’ the young woman would have been angry at being spied on by yet another vampire.

“I knew that your mate wouldn’t stand a chance because more were coming, so I intervened in the only way I could. I sent Esme, Rosalie, and Emmett to distract them at another location, and the remaining one – their leader – as it chased you two through the mountain range. Your mate was… dangerously without control – which is completely understandable considering you were attacked. I talked her into leaving you with me and brought you here.”

Esme had moved up to him and clasped one of their respective hands together, all the while giving Bella a sympathetic, gentle smile.

“Thanks,” Bella mumbled, suddenly distraught at how to deal with Alice and her behavior.

“W-what were those _things_ , t-those wolves?” she asked then, again fighting hard not to cringe from anxiety and stress at thinking about them.

“They aren’t ordinary wolves, but I’m afraid I can’t say much else. It’s not my secret to share, but I will explain what you want to know eventually,” Carlisle replied.

“Hey Bella!” Emmett’s voice hollered as he and Rosalie came into the dining-room from the open patio-door facing the forest and backyard of the Cullens’ residence, “how’re you feeling?”

“I’m… I’m okay,” she sighed, and glanced warily at Rosalie who was partly obscured by Emmett’s large frame. The blonde was glaring at her as if she was outraged at the very idea that Bella had survived the encounter in the woods that she’d been forced to assist with countering.

“Good. Would’ve hated if something happened to you B,” Emmett said, “You’re stuck being my friend now,” he insisted and grinned.

Bella couldn’t keep in a snort of laughter at Emmett’s total disregard for social norms. Rosalie scoffed callously, and Esme flicked her finger reproachfully on the younger vampire’s arm, like a disapproving mother.

Suddenly all four vampires stiffened simultaneously, and Bella was just about to ask what she’d done wrong.

“Here we go,” Rosalie quipped with un unimpressed grimace on her face and whooshed out of sight towards the front-end of the house. Emmett and Esme quickly followed suit.

Then, there was a loud growling sound from somewhere outside – sounding like someone had revved up a dozen tractor-mowers at the same time – and Bella’s body seized up in fright. She dropped her cutlery to loud clanging and whipped her head in the direction of the sound. Overcome with a need to run as far away as she could but unable to get up, she wrapped her arms around her stomach. The Michelin Star-deserving pancakes she’d just consumed suddenly felt like warm slithering snakes in her stomach, swelling and threatening to burst out of her mouth.

“Breathe Bella, breathe. I’m going to pick you up now,” Carlisle warned, trying to prevent the human from having a full-blown panic-attack.

He did as he’d said, but Bella wasn’t in a state to take in the blur the dining-hall turned into before she was handed over to Esme in the entrance-hall of their home. The Cullen-matriarch looked on heartbroken at Bella’s obvious distress and soothingly stroked the hair from the human’s clammy forehead.

“Did your parents never teach you about trespassing?” Bella heard Emmett ask someone angrily – he seemed to be out in the Cullens’ yard.

“As I’m sure you can hear, Isabella Swan is very much alive. The treaty stands,” Carlisle called from past the open front-door of the Cullen-home. Another bout of angry growling erupted, and Bella whimpered.

“ _Shhh_ ,” Esme tried to calm her – the kind woman aching at seeing someone in such distress and having to make it worse, “I need to take you outside now, Bella. But we’ll protect you; no harm will come to you,” she, too, did good on her word and carried Bella outside on the steps leading up to the entryway of the large house.

The crisp air roused Bella, and the frightened woman did the mistake of turning her head towards the large lawn and driveway in front of the vampire-family’s house, only to see four hulking wolves standing a stone’s throw away – blocking the gravel-road that led to and from the Cullen’s properties. All four of the beasts’ enormous bodies were breathing heavily, agitated, with their lips peeled angrily over their massive jaws full of sharp teeth.

Like a scared kitten Bella sprung to action, trying desperately to claw her way over Esme’s shoulder and out of her arms to escape somewhere in the house that might save her from being torn to pieces, the only coherent thought in her brain being that the Cullens had betrayed her and was going to feed her to the wolves. For all she knew they _could_ have turned out to be crazy after all – maybe even sending the wolves on Alice and Bella in the first place.

“ _Shhh_ , Bella. Nothing bad will happen to you,” Esme reassured the panicking human. Emmett moved over a few steps to stand protectively on Esme’s right side, placing a grounding hand on Bella’s flexing back hanging half across his mother’s shoulder.

“Bella is under our protection for now,” Carlisle announced, to which two of the wolves snarled rebelliously, “One of you have to phase back if we’re going to have a civilized conversation.”

Bella – realizing her struggling was futile – gave up and limply fell back into Esme’s arms just in time to see the largest of the wolves, the silver-grey one, huff angrily and walk off towards a thick cluster of trees shooting out from the forest surrounding the Cullens’ house. The smallest of the wolves – the grey-and-black spotted one Bella could remember chasing her and Alice through the forest – whined at the departure of the larger silvery one and seemed to actively fight the urge to follow it.

Esme put Bella down on the carved stone steps, still holding the human woman unable to control her shaking body protectively against her. Then, out of the green canopy of trees to their left Leah Clearwater stepped out. Words of warning welled up in Bella’s mouth, but they died out as Leah stepped up to the wolves, placing a placating hand on the whining wolf’s frame immediately calming it. And that’s when the penny dropped.

“L-Leah…” Bella whispered in shock, hardly believe what she was seeing.

“Bella,” Leah returned, her voice measured. Bella thought that she shouldn’t have been able to hear her from the distance they were at.

Leah was dressed in a large t-shirt and too large, sacking shorts barely clinging to the tall woman’s sinewy form. She slowed to a stop a few paces in front of the three wolves, smack in the middle of the Cullens and the wolves – barefoot in the frost-clad grass.

“Bella is going to come with us,” Leah began, apparently with no regard for Bella’s own take on the matter, “You Cullens are not to be trusted, you’ve proven that much by allying yourselves with that _fiend_ we ran into. As soon as she’s safe at the Reservation, I will discuss annulling the treaty between us with the council.”

“Please, I urge you to reconsider. No statutes of the treaty have been broken, and you know that,” Carlisle argued.

Bella couldn’t quite believe what was happening in front of her; Leah was standing completely steadfast and not a little intimidatingly between a pack of giant rabid wolves and a coven of vampires, discussing some type of treaty and Bella’s safety as if she wasn’t also present. Carlisle and his family were facing said pack of wolves staunchly, their tense posture and alert eyes the only proof that they were seeing what Bella was seeing – that she wasn’t just experiencing some type of hallucination.

The silvery wolf didn’t return from the woods surrounding them, and that only meant one thing to Bella.

“What the _fuck_ , Leah?!” she shouted, when she tied together all the ends in her mind.

No one part of the tense confrontation had expected her to speak up it seemed, judging by Rosalie’s surprised hiss and the rest of the Cullens tensing up, as well as Leah’s shocked expression and the three wolves’ low barks. Leah’s face quickly settled into a hard mask, however.

“I could say the same, Bella,” she clipped.

“I-I’m not the one hanging out with giant w-wolves!”

“But you _are_ hanging out with bloodsuckers,” Leah replied angrily.

“As if you dirty mutts are any better,” Rosalie muttered loud enough for the large dark grey wolf to snarl angrily and the two others to grouchily bark in response.

“Rosalie,” Esme warned stiffly, urging her daughter to not antagonize the wolves further.

“’Bloodsuckers’…? W-why—”

“Let’s drop the act. You know what they are. Honestly, I expected at least _some_ gratitude for saving your ass,” Leah said sharply, scowling at Bella.

“Saving?! You almost killed me for crying out loud!”

“Killed _you?_ No. Trying to kill the bloodsucker about to drain you of blood, yes!” the imposing Native American woman shouted.

“She wasn’t about to drain me, you don’t know what you’re talking about—” Bella began, but Leah interrupted her:

“For fuck’s sake, how delusional are you?!” she exploded.

“We’re together! I love her!” Bella shouted desperately. Leah glared angrily at each of the Cullens, and then settled on the human with a glower.

“That’s _it_. There’s clearly some sort of mind-control going on here—”

Emmett Cullen moved over to stand protectively between the shapeshifter and Bella – interrupting the beginnings of Leah’s angry rant – when she took several steps towards them aiming to pick the human up and take her home and chain her to a chair if need be.

“You are _trespassing_ ,” Emmett reiterated, “Our property is _our_ land; you can’t be here.”

“It is by the sole _grace_ of me, my pack, and the tribe that you are even allowed to have a property here,” Leah shot back and took a threating step towards Emmett – shaking with anger and not at all afraid of the vampire in front of her.

“Touch _anyone_ in my family and I will feed you your entrails,” Rosalie hissed and crouched down like a tightly compressed coil ready to spring.

“And my pack will rip you and your family apart and set fire to the remains,” Leah promised darkly, causing Esme and Emmett to hiss angrily. Carlisle’s face hardened – still committed to solving the situation peacefully, but angry in his own way at the threats of violence coming from both sides.

“Mind-control?” Bella hollered, “I was at the park of my own free will!”

“Even if I believed that—”

“And I’m—that vampire and I, we’re together!” Bella interrupted.

“ _Please,_ ” Leah shouted back theatrically, “give me a _fucking_ break. I’m getting you outta here.”

“Alpha, you know as well as I do that the treaty has not been broken. Perhaps we should—" Carlisle addressed Leah diplomatically, but neither Bella nor Leah gave him any attention.

He was abruptly cut off by Bella shouldering in front of Emmett and him – now fully down on the gritty paved pathway leading from the driveway to the door of the Cullen-family’s home, less than ten paces away from the shaking Leah Clearwater. The human woman he’d taken upon himself to protect charged forward seemingly without a care for her own wellbeing, and Carlisle motioned for Esme and Emmett – who were about to stop her – to stay put, not wanting to give the wolves any reason whatsoever to attack any of them.

Bella shoved at Leah’s steady frame once she reached her, not budging it an inch. Leah pulled a corner of her mouth up over her teeth like a viciously sneering dog.

“Back off!” the human shouted.

“Back _off,_ ” Leah echoed back, feeling her transformation bubbling under her skin.

“You have no business telling me what I can and can’t do, and who I can and can’t be around!”

“I said: back. Off,” Leah struggled out, and took a stumbling step back trying to put some distance between them. If she phased with Bella so close to her, she would end up shredding the human to mincemeat.

“Bella, get back!” Emmett called, crouching down and readying himself to shove the human away from the Quileute-pack’s Alpha and absorb the hits himself if she lost her cool and phased.

The large dark gunmetal-grey wolf quickly stepped up to Bella and used its enormous head and snout to roughly shove Bella back. The human stumbled to the ground a safe distance away from Leah, glaring angrily at the large wolf. The all-consuming fear she’d felt for the beasts – straight out of some horror-story myth about werewolves – had been consumed by the anger she felt towards Leah. Not only had her supposed friend lied to her face for months, but she’d interrogated her, tried to control her, stalked her, and eventually _attacked_ her and her mate – and was now arguing that _Bella_ was in the wrong.

Leah managed to calm herself down somewhat, get her wolf and the anger it was chained to under enough control to resume her argument with Bella:

“They’re freaking _vampires_ Bella; don’t you see that?!”

“They don’t hurt humans! Besides, you’re _freaking_ werewolves, so who are you to talk?!”

“ _They_ don’t,” Leah said and gesticulated towards the Cullens, “but your _friend_ does! And I don’t know why the fuck this family of leeches would whore you out to that _thing_ —”

“Quite a foul mouth on that one…” Esme remarked quietly to herself and her family.

“If I wasn’t so afraid of you biting my head off, I would punch you right now,” Bella gritted out – Leah’s cruel defamation of the Cullens and her mate making her see red.

“I’m gonna put an end to this, one way or the other,” Leah stated with finality.

“Don’t you get it?! The only reason things went to shit earlier today is because you and your pack of rabid animals decided to attack us!” Bella screamed.

“We did that because it’s our goddamned _duty_! My ancestors, their ancestors,” Leah defended and swept over the rest of her pack, “all inherited this power. And they swore an oath to keep these lands free of the Cold Ones – vampires. We’re honoring that.”

“So why are the Cullens here?” Bella demanded.

“Because they made a treaty with the previous pack guarding these lands, almost a century ago. That I am forced to abide to. If it was up to me, they _wouldn’t_ be here.”

_So that’s the treaty Carlisle was talking about…_ Bella thought to herself.

“How come they got the treaty then?”

“Because their leader convinced the previous Alpha that they had peaceful intentions, and because they supposedly only feed on the blood of animals. Or so I’m told,” Leah said bitterly, and looked towards Carlisle.

“They do—”

“But the bloodsucker you were all chummy with earlier _doesn’t,”_ Leah clarified, “and even if I _believed_ your little romance-story and not you just being brainwashed, and even if I _cared_ about it, no one in my pack will hesitate to rip that fiend to pieces and burn the parts,” she finished coldly – again stepping up to Bella and proceeding to lift her up.

“Don’t touch me!” Bella shouted and pulled away, to no avail.

Before Leah could pick up Bella and take her away from the Cullens and the perceived influence she thought they had on her, Emmett was there whipping his arm between Bella and Leah like an unmovable turnstile.

“You heard her,” he said roughly, his 6’5” mesomorphic frame towering over both Bella and Leah in her human form – and challenging the Alpha’s intentions to remove Bella from their property without her consent.

Leah’s jaw tensed, and if it wasn’t for the supernatural density of her bones, she would have pulverized her own teeth.

“This isn’t over. If I find out a _single drop_ of her blood has been spilled the treaty is void. If I find out she’s being kept here against her will, it’s void. I’ll have this place under surveillance, and if that red-eyed bloodsucker returns and you so much as lift a finger to help it, it’s void,” Leah threatened.

She gave Bella one final lasting look – urging the human too see things her way. But when she was met only with open defiance she backed off and turned around, motioning for her pack to leave before running off into the woods she’d emerged from not even 10 minutes prior, phasing, and joining them.


	18. Negotiation pt. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life’s been hectic, to say the least.  
> School-stuff, and then I got plopped down into an internship in the middle of the second wave of this fucking pandemic crashing over us. Just a lot of other stuff on my mind as well these past few weeks. I’ll try to make it up to you guys! 😊
> 
> Happy reading, and stay safe!

“Bella, how are you?” Esme asked, suddenly next to the girl again and worriedly looking her over. Carlisle moved over to the human too, and Rosalie reluctantly followed.

“ _Phew!_ ” Emmett let out, “That was tense!”

“Who does those mutts think they are, coming onto our property and threatening us like that?” Rosalie questioned angrily.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” Carlisle suggested.

As the family gathered in the living room on the ground floor of their large, three-story house – Bella, Emmett, and Esme on the three-seated couch; Carlisle in the armchair opposite them; and Rosalie standing a dozen feet away from the rest with her arms defensively crossed over her chest – it began sinking in for Bella that not only was there an entire family of vampires living in Forks, but the rural town also seemed to border a Reservation that housed werewolves.

 _Not only_ had Bella’s enigmatic childhood-best friend turned out to be a vampire, but the girl she’d befriended and spent all her summer and winter breaks in Forks with had turned out to be a werewolf. A werewolf utterly determined to destroy Alice – and by extension Bella’s life, even if that wasn’t a conscious effort; so completely convinced that Alice was a threat to Bella’s life and everybody else living in Forks that she’d plow her way through an entire family of innocent vampires to get to her if needed.

“You guys shouldn’t do this… you’re innocent,” Bella mumbled, feeling guilty at somehow roping the entire family into her mess.

“We’re doing this because we want to—”

“—or because we’re forced to,” Rosalie interrupted her mother cynically.

“Rose, play nice,” Emmett urged.

“Like I said,” Esme continued and sent Rosalie a stern look, “We want to help you. And your friend. As far as we’re concerned you never asked to be dragged into our world – this world of vampires and giant wolves butting heads over a rural town in western Washington. Carlisle told us about how you and your friend are mates – and as unbelieving as we were at first, I dare say we’re convinced now. And no one should have to witness their mate die helplessly, if I have something to say about it,” Esme proclaimed resolutely. Bella felt a small urge to hug the compassionate woman but tempered it, thinking it’d be weird to hug her new friend’s – Emmett’s – mother, so out of the blue.

“But I mean… the treaty?” Bella questioned.

“I entered into that treaty with the previous pack here, like Leah said, back in 1936. It still stands, no matter this Alpha’s stance on it. The Quileute tribe council will think twice before they annul it, because they – like us – don’t want to risk losing their friends and family in a skirmish.”

“So… what can you do? Or can’t do, within the frames of it.”

“We are not to enter the Quileute tribe’s lands – which encompass the actual Reservation, but also all land of the coastal strip between the Makah Reservation down to the Hoh Reservation, using a stretch of the Bogachiel River as part of its border. It’s a sizeable chunk of northwestern Washington; I can show you on a map later. The pack keeps up regular patrols there – but we have and always will honor it regardless. It’s mostly speculation for now, but I suspect that they have some additional sense that alerts them if their lands are encroached upon by vampires.”

“We were by the Bogachiel River…” Bella mumbled, realizing that her unfortunate choice of a meeting-place may have set off this whole ordeal.

“Technically – in the terms of the treaty at least – you were on the right side of the river. However, most of the land in this area is considered truce-land, neutral land – where both parties can venture and not be threatened. Only our property is considered a… haven, if you will, for us – so long as the treaty is in effect. They aren’t allowed here at all. But only our family is part of the treaty; other vampires are free game in all neutral and Quileute-lands. The treaty is voided immediately if any member of my family hunts or kills a human, or if we cross the border into their sacred lands.”

“So that’s why they attacked immediately?”

“I’m afraid so, Alice’s red eyes reveal her choice of diet and no place here is entirely safe for anyone not part of our family. But I would venture to say that even if it had been a Cullen standing so close to you, they would have attacked first and asked questions later. They’ve been terribly riled up ever since they found out that an unknown vampire slipped through their defenses.”

“But if they can hunt them anywhere, how didn’t they find her sooner?”

“Because they can’t show themselves to humans – bound by the same secrecy as we are. Too many people and houses in the central parts of Forks. But to be fair they’ve only known about Alice for a few days, since the 15th. And as far as I know only their Alpha had previous experience with fighting a vampire, the other four members are all newly transformed.”

“So, if Alice stays in Forks, she’s safe?”

“Theoretically yes, but practically… she will have to leave to hunt at some point, and the wolves share some sort of… telepathic link with each other. It’s enough if one of them picks up the faintest trace of her smell, and they’d all be onto her. They are as fast as we are, and their Alpha is even faster. And that’s not even counting the fact that vampires and the wolves are… _archenemies_ if you will, and that goes both ways. My family and the pack can barely tolerate each other – as I’m sure you noticed just now. Only the mutual benefits of the treaty make that possible. Alice will most certainly attempt to attack them if she can, it is more-or-less wired in her – just as it is wired in the wolves to keep these lands free of vampires. So, her staying in Forks while things are like this is a bad idea.”

“Oh…”

“We will figure something out, B!” Emmett spoke up and placed a hard, comforting hand on Bella’s shoulder.

“Sure, let’s pretend that this doesn’t put us all in danger,” Rosalie scoffed, “I’m not going to stand by and watch my family and the safety we’ve built for ourselves crumble. _Again._ Just because some human got dealt a bad hand.”

“Babe, you know that’s not how it works. Remember, I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t seen me that day and saved me when our connection sparked,” Emmett cautioned. Rosalie’s expression darkened.

“Whatever,” she huffed, irritated with her mate and how he just _had_ to be right about that.

Carlisle’s explanation of how the treaty worked, and Leah’s shouting earlier about the Cullen-family’s free pass because of their animal-only diet made Bella think. What if Alice converted to only animal blood? Granted, it hadn’t gone that well the first time she’d tried it when Bella had almost been bitten by her. Honestly – since that had happened again just hours prior – she found that wasn’t reason enough to immediately strike down her idea. Some trial and error were sure to be expected, she supposed, and maybe Alice converting her diet could make the wolves back off?

“What if Alice converted to drinking only animal blood?” she asked and looked between Carlisle and Esme.

“That’s… that could work, but she’d need to work out her own treaty with the pack if that was the case, if she plans to stay in the area. And that presumes that she can _stick_ to an animal diet. Like I mentioned yesterday, it requires an immense amount of self-control and discipline.”

“Right. Um, I know that what you’ve heard and seen of her so far doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but she really does have good control. And she’s really kind and sympathetic, things have just been hectic,” Bella said.

“Hah, excuse me if I don’t believe you. You’re not exactly the most credible source,” Rosalie scoffed.

“Rosalie,” Esme warned again. That seemed to be a recurring theme in the family’s dynamic.

“What? She’s not! If they really are mates, it’s not like it’d come easy for her to say _bad_ things about this Alice,” the blonde vampire defended. Bella supposed that she had a point.

“Rosalie, maybe you should go and pick up Bella’s car at the Bogachiel State Park,” Carlisle suggested. Even Bella picked up that his voice brokered no argument.

“ _Gladly!_ ”, Rosalie said – oddly reminiscent of a moody teenager at that point, “Where’s the keys?” she asked Bella. Bella tried not to shrink back into the couch cushion.

“In my jacket, but I… I lost it in the chase, I think. Or next to the river,” she admitted, dreading Rosalie’s response.

“Great,” the imposing blonde vampire said sarcastically before swishing out of the living room and house.

“She’ll find your jacket and bring your car over to your father’s house,” Carlisle explained. As he did, Bella startled; Charlie!

“Shit!” she said and scrambled to get her phone out of the pocket of her stained and torn favorite pair of jeans – they’d never be the same again.

The clock on the screen said 2:17 PM, and she had two text messages and one missed call from Charlie. Deciding to call him to nip the problem in the bud directly, she dialed him up.

Charlie always checked up on her around lunchtime whenever she had weekdays off school – mostly to ensure that she didn’t sleep the entire day away. But some of it was because of his almost 20 years as a cop and his love for his only child sparked a rigorous need to make sure she was okay and safe at all hours of the day. He limited himself to a maximum of two calls per day if Bella had a day off while he was working – more than that would be overbearing and slightly too controlling for a parent of a near-adult and would only make Bella annoyed with him.

“Hey Dad,” she began, and the Cullens around her could hear Charlie Swan’s panicked hollering, “I know, sorry. I accidentally muted my phone. Yeah. No Dad, I got up and ate a couple of hours ago. I’m gonna go over to Angela’s later. To study, yeah. We got this huge project in History. So, I might still be there when you come home.”

Bella felt bad lying to her father, and even the last months of constant lying or hiding of the truth hadn’t changed that. But she very well couldn’t admit that she was at the Cullens’ house when she’d made no mention whatsoever of knowing any of them.

“Yeah. Sorry again. See you later, Charlie.”

Bella ended the call and looked around. The remaining members of the Cullen-family had said nothing to each other during her conversation with her father and didn’t even seem to have moved. It was a bit unsettling. She released a deep tired sigh, relaxing back into the couch. She felt like she’d be able to sleep for 20 hours nonstop after the day she’d had. And it wasn’t even over yet.

“So, what’re we gonna do?” she asked, “what can you guys even do without breaking the treaty?” Her questions seemed to press play on the Cullens’ movements again.

“As Leah put it you can’t come to harm, and we can’t directly engage the wolves or help your mate if there’s a violent confrontation, that will tear up the treaty instantly. But the treaty doesn’t say anything about indirectly helping. If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s already drawn their attention, we might have been able to give her momentary shelter in our house without their knowledge. I still think that could work, we could argue for the loophole of sorts in the treaty regarding our own lands, but I will need to call a meeting with the tribe’s council – and they will have to be willing to grant one.”

“What if…” Bella began, but trailed off once she realized what she was about to ask.

“What? Don’t be afraid to speak up, of everyone here you know Alice the best.”

“What if she becomes part of your family, or we at least _convince_ the wolves that she is?” Bella asked, holding her breath in anticipation of the Cullens’ reactions.

It was a big thing to ask, even if it would only be used as a ruse, temporary. For them to take in and shelter a vampire they didn’t know. To trick Leah’s pack of wolves and risk their entire family’s wellbeing and safety. And she wasn’t even sure how Alice would take to the idea. But truly she was at her wits end. The Cullens looked between each other.

“Give us a moment, Bella,” Carlisle said, and all three of them disappeared into another room.

Bella fiddled anxiously with her phone, nervously locking and unlocking it repeatedly, while Carlisle, Esme, and Emmett were away in the kitchen discussing Bella’s suggestion. The came out a minute later, walking at a human speed towards her. None of their facial expressions revealed their stance on her proposal and that unnerved her. Before any of them had even spoken up she had resigned herself to the worse possible fate she could conjure up.

“Bella, it is not that we are opposed to the idea. But it would require your mate to adhere to an animal-only diet before we even explore it – no matter if it’s a ruse, temporary, or permanent. We’ve been a family like this for almost 100 years, and we are not comfortable endangering that on a whim. As I’m sure you understand,” Carlisle said. Emmett sat down on the couch again next to Bella and slung an arm on the back of it – close enough to give some support to Bella, but not too close to make her feel crowded.

“I understand that. I can convince her, I know that. I don’t think she really wants to kill people; you know like you explained vampires usually, uh, do…? When I forced her to reveal what feeding meant, that she must kill during it and just how many people she’s killed over the years… She was really tormented by it. She didn’t even know it was possible to live off the blood of animals.”

“I see. That’s not unusual; very few are aware that animal-blood can sustain us. And the majority of those who know don’t respect the lifestyle.”

“And honestly, I didn’t even think you would consider it. I mean, we’re total strangers to you guys. People don’t usually go to these lengths for strangers like _this_ ,” Bella shrugged.

“There’s ‘right’ and there’s ‘wrong’. And condemning Alice to sure death and you to suffering for as long as you live is wrong,” Esme said, her mouth set in a determined line.

Bella thanked whatever deity would listen that she’d happened to stumble upon a family of vampires so passionately righteous. Out of context that seemed like the strictest of oxymorons, but she’d come to understand that it really wasn’t one.

“Do you guys have any… you know, _gifts_?” she decided she might as well ask them, when they were laying all the cards on the table anyway. Esme and Carlisle looked at her with shocked expressions, but Emmett just chortled loudly.

“I should’ve bet that Bella-B here knew a whole lot of stuff she hasn’t told us!” Emmett laughed and slapped his knee good-naturedly.

“We don’t,” Carlisle said, his voice oddly low all of a sudden, “How come you know about that?”

Bella did see the immorality in using Alice’s gift like a bargaining chip to fully sway the Cullens in favor of taking her mate in, but she really did see no other way to make sure that things might work out.

“Alice has one. She said they are very rare, that she’s only ever met one other vampire who was, uh, additionally gifted.”

“What is her gift, if I may ask?”

“I think it’s for the best that—” Bella began, but her phone vibrated in her lap signaling a received text-message. Bella glanced down.

**> > You can tell them; it will cement their decision.**

Alice’s text read. Bella was relieved; Alice’s ability seemed to be working again. She briefly wondered how much of Bella’s conversation with the Cullens’ she’d seen to be comfortable enough with sharing knowledge of her gift with them. She had to warn her not to come back to Forks just yet, after she was done explaining herself to the Cullens.

“She knows stuff that will happen. Sees the future.”

Three separate gasps were heard, and she could clearly see the doubt on the vampires’ faces.

“That’s… hard to believe,” Carlisle said.

“Tell me about it,” Bella muttered dryly, trying to lighten up their reactions some, “I thought she was crazy at first. To be honest though, it’s sort of flimsy and random. And it hasn’t worked properly for a while, I think since those wolves started harassing us. But she just texted me, here look,” Bella said and held up the lit screen of her phone displaying Alice’s message to the three Cullens currently there, the timestamp of the message clearly visible.

There was no way Alice could have known what she was talking about without either being in the very close vicinity – which was ruled out – or having the ability to tap into such knowledge by other means – like a gift of future sight – and she just proved that to the Cullens.

“That is simply… extraordinary. If it’s indeed true,” Carlisle breathed. Esme murmured a similar sentiment, while Emmett decided to speak his opinion very loudly:

“That’s awesome! I mean, if she’s gonna be my new sister, that’d be so cool! A _psychic_ sister!”

Carlisle and Esme chuckled nervously, as if to excuse Emmett’s excited outburst to Bella. Truth was that his reaction had been pretty much in line with what she’d expected. Maybe not the ‘sister’-part, but she supposed that if he wanted to refer to her as such, she wasn’t one to judge.

“I’d be happy to have it explained in-depth when we finally get her over here,” Carlisle said, thirsty for knowledge as he was. Bella noted that he said ‘when’ and not ‘if’, and that made her a bit lighter inside despite all the hardships that were surely ahead of them all.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to tell you. Eventually. She doesn’t really trust people, but she hasn’t fully explained why that is. I will contact her though, forward what we’ve talked about.”

The three of them continued sitting in the living room, chatting about this and that. Carlisle explained more things about his family and vampires in general; Esme talked to Bella like a comforting mother when she became confused, or when the day’s events got her feeling anxious or sad; and Emmett filled his role as a kind, excited but sort of one-track-minded guy. Bella could see herself befriending all of them; they were so much more than their condition unveiled at first glance.

She texted Alice intermittently during her conversation with the family, forwarding her all the information. Her mate was reluctant to say the least with the idea of not immediately returning to Forks, but Bella convinced her to stay put for now until some progress had been made either with Leah or the tribe-council. Talking with Leah again was something she knew she wouldn’t get away from doing.

Rosalie came home a while later, loudly complaining about how horrible Bella’s car was to drive, and that she’d even considered to get out and carry it through the woods at one point. Bella made up her mind and got up from the couch and – much to the family’s surprise – walked up to Rosalie.

“Thank you for picking up my car and jacket Rosalie,” she said, standing two feet away from the scariest member of the Cullen-family, “Also—”

“No,” the blonde disregarded before Bella could even get her intended sentence out and turned around to walk away from her. Bella snapped to action and hurriedly followed.

“I’m sorry for what I said to you,” she managed to get out before Rosalie slammed a door off to the side of the kitchen in Bella’s face. She opened it up, but was halted by Rosalie growling out:

“If you open that door, I will wring your neck.”

Bella quickly closed the door with a scared peep. She really wanted to apologize to Rosalie for what she’d said to her the day she’d confronted the Cullen-siblings in the library at school; telling Rosalie that she was lucky she was beautiful because she had a shit personality. It had been gnawing inside her for days, but unfortunately other disasters of varying intensity had taken precedence.

“Well, yeah. Sorry again. I really didn’t mean what I said, it was a terrible thing to say to someone. I’ll leave you alone now,” she said to the closed door – reasonably sure that Rosalie still heard her – and turned around to find Emmett standing behind her. She jumped, and he chuckled at successfully surprising her.

“Give her some time, she’ll come around eventually now that you’ve apologized. Come, let me drive you home.”

Bella hadn’t said it out loud, but she was terrified of going home by herself because of the possibility that the wolves could be lurking in the forests around her at any time and she wouldn’t know. She realized that she’d probably never fully get over the trauma that the beasts’ chase of her and Alice had instilled in her mind. But she was thankful that Emmett offered, and eagerly followed him out to his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe a bit of a filler-ish chapter (sorry), but we need to get through this (and maybe a little bit more) for plot-advancements – I also want Alice and Bella back in focus!
> 
> Thank you so much for the views and kudos and comments everyone.  
> My mind is blown that this has almost 300 kudos. Probably not a lot for many writers, but wayyyyyy more than I ever thought! :O


	19. Fortune's Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title-drop – dun DUN DUUUUUN!!! (sort of)
> 
> (also, prepare for some fluff)  
> (bonus points if you get which Bellice fic I’m sorta maybe paying a bit of homage too, as well)

Bella had texted Leah sporadically during the following Friday afternoon – it had been two days since the confrontation between the pack of werewolves and the Cullens back at the latter’s house – but her texts had so far gone unanswered:

**> > We need to talk**

**> > Leah, answer your phone.**

**> > I know you read these**

Bella had stood inches away from an explosive werewolf, essentially arguing about her vampire-mate’s right to live or not. An explosive werewolf who turned out to be her former best friend from when she was a kid and living in Forks; Leah Clearwater – who on top of that seemed to be the Alpha of the entire mentioned pack of werewolves.

She’d slept for 13 hours straight when she’d gotten home from that, and the Thursday had been spent desperately catching up on the schoolwork that had fallen by the wayside the last week. She may have gotten dragged into all this supernatural drama – which sounded _so weird_ when she thought about it – but she really couldn’t afford to fail out of her classes if she hoped to get away from Forks any time soon.

**> > I said everything I  
wanted to 2 days ago**

Things had ended badly between them during said confrontation; Leah was convinced that Bella was either being manipulated, forced, or had been brainwashed to like the Cullens and Alice. Bella had angrily shouted her part, but in the end, she’d just been saddened by Leah’s unsympathetic and cold – bordering on cruel – attitude.

At least she’d had a nice conversation with the Cullen-family afterwards; they had agreed to the idea of sheltering Alice for a while, and maybe even taking her into the family – if she could stick to a diet of animal-blood. Carlisle had offered to call for a meeting with the Quileute-tribe’s council of elders – the only ones capable of controlling the wolves on the Reservation – to discuss things, and possibly renegotiate the treaty.

They’d been so helpful to Bella that she still had difficulties believing that a random family – with _so much_ to lose – would just step up and care for two strangers like that. She’d realized things wouldn’t be easy from there though; she still had a lot of stuff to do, and Alice still hadn’t come back to Forks.

The wolves patrolled the area intensively, and their leader had sworn to Bella’s and the Cullens’ faces that she and her pack would destroy Alice the second they got the chance. And Bella’s first task at hand was to get Leah to back off, now that she had replied, and they could have a conversation about it – from a safe distance.

**> > Well I didn’t**

**> > I don’t care**

**> > You do, we’re friends. Or  
used to be, I dunno anymore.  
That should mean something  
to you**

**> > Your lack of a response  
only tells me I’m right**

Bella knew that provoking the werewolf could turn out to be counter-productive – but really, she needed her former best friend to engage and listen to her. The wolves were bound by duty, Bella understood that – but they were also bound by the tribe-council’s order, and the treaty the Cullens signed with them over 80 years ago. A treaty that technically wasn’t all-encompassing, that had loopholes. Loopholes Bella was too desperate to ignore.

**> > So?**

**> > So, we need to talk about  
what happened**

**> > There’s nothing to talk  
about. The Cullens fucked up  
their part of the treaty**

**> > They didn’t though, they  
haven’t broken any of the  
conditions**

**> > Bullshit**

**> > It’s not. They haven’t  
killed any humans and they  
haven’t trespassed on your  
land or spilled your secret.  
You revealed yourselves to me.**

**> > It isn’t even about the  
Cullens tho, it’s about that  
bloodsucker who got its hooks  
into you**

**> > She has a name, and she  
didn’t get her hooks into me**

Bella saw Alice as a person. The Cullens saw each other as people, and they saw Alice as one too. It had become painfully clear very quickly that Leah didn’t view any of them in such a benign light. In fact, she’d been very vocal about it. But Bella was tired of the constant dehumanizing attitude towards either of them – no matter how non-human the people in question were.

**> > I don’t care  
I’ll destroy her when I see  
her because you’re clearly  
being influenced by something.  
They’re killers, Bella **

**> > The Bella I knew when we  
were kids & every break since  
then wouldn’t be okay with  
that**

**> > She’s trying to change.  
She doesn’t want to kill  
people, but she didn’t  
know she had a choice.**

**> > They’re unnatural**

**> > Okay, and turning into  
giant rabid wolves is  
more natural?**

**> > That’s different**

**> > How is that different?  
Maybe Alice didn’t want this  
from the start? Thought about  
that?**

**> > If she doesn’t want to be  
one, there’s a solution for  
that. Either by our hands or  
by her own**

**> > That’s cruel Leah. When did  
you get so cold?**

**> > When I turned into this  
fucking wolf and realized what  
kind of monstrosities are out  
there KILLING people every  
single day**

**> > When I figured out that one  
has its claws hooked deep into  
my former best friend**

**> > I love her. I’ve known her  
for over a decade, even if I  
didn’t know what she was that  
entire time. She was there  
for me when NO ONE else was,  
everything with my mother.**

**> > Humans can be that for you  
Bella**

**> > She’s just waiting to sink  
her teeth into you and drain  
you dry**

**> > That rules out you as well,   
I assume? **

**> > Look. She wants to change,  
she wants to be like the  
Cullens. For me, and for  
herself. She’s never been  
truly happy like this**

**> > She’s not a threat to me,  
Leah.**

Bella did lift some vital points, she knew that. Hinting at Alice’s dislike for what she had to do to survive; the questionable basis on which Alice had even become a vampire in the first place – which was hard to prove either way because of Alice’s complete amnesia regarding anything of her human life; the fact that Bella and Leah used to be friends and that that should mean something to Leah; that Alice had been there for her when she was a kid, that she was compassionate and kind; that she’s willing to change. Bella doubted it would sway Leah’s convictions – at least not visibly.

Her former best friend was a lot of things back when everything hadn’t gone straight to shit yet; witty, laid back, loyal, kind – but she was also stubborn, proud, and had an anti-authority streak a mile long. Leah confirmed her suspicions with her reply:

**> > I’m not sympathizing**

Perhaps Leah wasn’t, she _probably_ wasn’t. But Bella had been expecting that response, so she played the ace in her sleeve:

**> > She’s gonna join the  
Cullens. She’s going to feed  
on animals for the rest of  
her existence.**

**> > And before you counter that  
with something about the  
treaty: no, that doesn’t break  
it. The treaty only says that  
they can’t turn people into  
vampires. Alice is one  
already, and she was def not  
turned by Carlisle**

**> > That’s not how it works.  
The council will be told of  
this, and they’ll agree with  
me**

**> > That’s EXACTLY how a  
contract works – it states  
what’s allowed/not allowed.  
Things outside its framework  
aren’t affected.**

**> > And the council already  
knows, Carlisle told them just  
a few hours ago and called for  
a meeting to discuss it**

**> > Fuck this, I’m out**

Bella wasn’t omniscient and even though they were only texting, she knew that she had just taken Leah by surprise with her clear knowledge of the treaty and her assured way of using it against her maybe-former friend.

_Bella 1, Leah 0,_ she thought to herself, unable to fight a grin.

////

“What is your first memory of me?” Alice asked Bella with open curiosity – she had to get herself thinking about something else other than how badly she wanted to run back to Forks and her mate.

They were on the phone; it was all that made Alice able to stay put in Seattle for now – being able to hear Bella’s voice in some way, at least. It had been three days since the attack, Alice’s flight to Seattle, and Bella’s confrontation with the wolves and subsequent talk with the Cullen-family. Oh, and her almost biting Bella somewhere in between all that.

As soon as she had fully come to her senses – just hours after it had happened – she’d tried to apologize to Bella over the phone, but the human wouldn’t have it. She’d told her that they shouldn’t talk about that right now because they had so many more important things to handle. Alice had insisted; told Bella that she never would have acted that way or even thought about it if it hadn’t been for the fight with the wolves, and the adrenaline-fueled chase that followed; that her blood had never been that kind of a problem for the vampire, and that she wouldn’t allow it to become one now either.

Bella had said she understood how everything going on right now; the Cullens’ presence in town, Bella now seemingly _spending time_ with them – without her there to protect her human, and now the wolves running rampant in the area, made Alice’s instincts near impossible to control. Alice’s mate had also told her that she hoped that some future kinship with the Cullen-family once she got back to Forks, maybe the change in diet as well, would make things easier with time. Like Carlisle had said was possible.

Alice still felt extremely guilty about everything, though.

“Hmm…” Bella mulled, “the first one that I can remember fully is when my mom and I had just moved to Massachusetts and you helped me with that large trunk I had. You left when Renée almost came into the room.”

“An aesthetically pleasing trunk I suppose, but really impractical for someone who couldn’t lift dozens of pounds,” Alice said with a slight teasing tone in her voice that Bella hadn’t heard in weeks. Everything had been too hectic, dramatic or life-and-death for them to have any time or possibility to banter and talk like they used to.

“ _Ha-ha_ ,” Bella deadpanned, “you’re just annoyed because it reminds you of how old you are,” she teased back. The trunk in question was probably made in the 1930’s.

“Bella! Never point out a lady’s age like that!” Alice jokingly admonished. Bella just laughed.

“That memory isn’t my first though,” she said and went back to the original question, “because I recognized you from before, and I have these vague memories that I saw you in Forks sometimes when I was even younger – I think at least. Like you’d stand next to the wooded area behind our house?”

“I did, yeah,” Alice confirmed, “It wasn’t like I had much else to do. Looking over you, feeling like I was protecting you made me calm. Less prone to isolating myself in forests and abandoned buildings for days on end, or aimless wandering.”

“Was that all you ever did? That sounds kind of sad.”

“No, I did stuff. I’ve been to many places, seen many things. Not that tourism was ever on the forefront of my mind. In the 1980’s I tried nightclubs though,” Alice amended and wrinkled her nose – not that Bella saw that, “Not really my scene. The anonymity was nice though, but it was very grating on my nerves – and control, I suppose.”

“Oh.” That made an uncomfortable amount of sense to Bella; a crowded space, full of warm human bodies – the pounding bass of the music probably only worsening the effect the hundreds of pounding heartbeats in the room would have on someone like Alice.

“Do you want to hear of my earliest memory of you?” the vampire asked brightly, and Bella eagerly took the chance to move on to a more pleasant topic.

“The first time we met?” Bella asked, her excitement evident in her voice.

“Yes.”

“Please,” the human said, and happily leaned back against her headboard to enjoy the coming story.

“It was the 18th of August 2007. You were with your mother in New York City, I think visiting some friends of hers but I’m not sure. And there was an accident in the building you were staying; a faulty gas-pipe,” Alice began, “The accident wasn’t too serious, but the explosion when it ignited was enough to rock the entire building and set fire to it. The alarm went off, and your mother carried you outside.”

“What were you doing there?” Bella asked when Alice quieted.

“I had an unannounced vision of that setting in early 2001, but I didn’t understand the significance of it. Vampires don’t forget things, or at least I haven’t begun to yet. So, the vision stuck with me and I twisted and turned it around in my head many times – trying to understand what was so important about a random alleyway in The Bronx in New York City. After a lot of time spent trying to understand it, I could pinpoint it fairly accurately, and what timeframe the vision depicted. And I decided to go there, see what my strange gift thought was so important. It was you, I just never understood what significance the tiny six-year-old girl in a sea of people and commotion had until I laid eyes on her.”

Bella gasped; completely hooked by the story. Alice had a way of telling things, and it made it almost possible for Bella to envision the scene in front of her – even if she couldn’t remember it these days.

“Then what?” she asked.

“You’re impatient,” Alice snickered on the other end of the line.

“Shush! I’m invested. And very curious.”

“People were surging out of the building; it was a large apartment-complex. The commotion outside only grew worse as the fire-brigade arrived – people scrambling all over the place in fear that their homes would burn to cinders. Your mother lost sight of you. I was standing in the alleyway between the building and one of its neighbors, on the other side from the part that had caught fire. At a distance people don’t really notice the… in-human traits on me, the eyes. But there was a lot of people outside, even more arriving to watch the spectacle, and I was just getting ready to leave when that small girl was bumped by some spectators to end up in front of the alleyway’s opening. I remember how, completely unbidden, a thought occurred to me: maybe she was the point of the vision. I hadn’t found any other reason for why I should have been in the area. And I was proven right when you turned around and peered into the alley.”

“You were just some 30 feet in front of me and when I looked at you, I just realized that the vision hadn’t been about the explosion, or the people, or the location – it had been about you. It’s so difficult to explain, I don’t know if it was just fortune’s chance, but when I looked at you everything made sense – all the things, even those I can’t remember from my human life, had to happen just like they did in order to put me in that location, that very day and time. My mind flooded with visions of you, one after the other, when I saw you and I just stood there frozen. And you didn’t even hesitate to walk up to me, Bella,” Alice said, her voice sounding a bit choked up at the end – like she was struggling out her words through heavy emotion.

Bella took the chance to speak up; Alice seemed like she needed a few moments of respite:

“I can’t remember what you looked like, or anything, but I assume it was the same as now. And you don’t look even half as scary as you think you do. I bet you used to be a hyperactive whirlwind-y dork when you were human,” she said and snickered. This time it was Alice’s turn to gasp, and Bella realized that maybe she shouldn’t have talked about the human life Alice couldn’t remember so breezily, perhaps it was a sensitive topic.

“Sorry,” she quickly amended, “I didn’t mean to like, be so casual about it. If it’s a sensitive subject.”

“It’s not. I was just surprised. And I think you might be right,” Alice said, and Bella could practically hear her brilliant smile through the phone.

“Anyways, I think six-year-old me was just curious why some strange, sort of cute girl just stood there and stared,” Bella went on.

“Probably,” the vampire chuckled, “You asked me if I was alright. I managed to nod, still perplexed beyond capacity at everything that just happened, and how a small human child could affect me like she did. You said you were glad that I was unharmed – assuming I had been in the building during the accident too, I think – and that we could be friends if I wanted.”

“That’s such a childlike thing to ask,” Bella laughed and fought a blush, “like never mind that a random stranger is standing in front of you just staring with red eyes and probably alarmingly pale skin – let’s ask her if she wants to be friends!”

“It was so innocent,” Alice smiled, “and I think just what I needed to snap out of it. I crouched down and introduced myself, and you just beamed a smile at me – completely unconcerned with what had just happened in the building you were staying in – and said your name was Isabella but that you didn’t really like it because it made you sound like an old lady.”

By now Bella had curled up with her knees to her chest against the headboard of her bed – completely engrossed in Alice’s story, and so touched by the way Alice portrayed her, as if six-year-old her had been the pixie-looking vampire’s savior.

“Your mother was calling for you; I heard her over the commotion, but you didn’t. I felt a bit… guilty I suppose – which was a feeling I hadn’t experienced many times in this life before that moment – at not alerting you to it. But I just wanted a few more moments with you. You made me forget what I was – it was as if a whole new part of my personality surfaced, or re-surfaced perhaps, when I saw you. As confusing as it was in the moment, I realized later that I suddenly had something tying me to this life; I had gotten so used to everything around me dying or withering away that I had simply stopped caring. But I cared about you, _instantly_ , and I haven’t stopped since.”

“It’s only gotten stronger, right?”

“Yes.”

Bella’s cheeks flared up in a blush with what she was about to say:

“Like for me Alice. I mean, some of it I guess is natural – that I didn’t understand certain, I dunno, _abstract_ concepts when I was a kid. But now I do, a-and I think since you came back… I honestly can’t picture a life that you’re not part of without feeling like I’m going to panic,” Bella confessed.

“Bella… I miss you a lot,” Alice said quietly, her voice rasping out the final word – as if she was barely containing the urge to get up and run back to Bella.

“I know. I miss you too. So much. But you need to stay put for just a little while more. We’ll see each other soon,” the human promised.

Bella wondered whether they should talk about what had happened in the clearing by the Bogachiel River, before the wolves had attacked them. When Bella had been so struck by Alice’s sparkling beauty in the sunlight that she had admitted that she wanted to kiss her.

And said kiss had practically happened too; Alice had seemed everything but opposed to the idea. Even if the kiss in question hadn’t been lips against lips, it had been very cold lips against very hot skin, and then – like now that she was thinking about it again – her brain had utterly malfunctioned. Then, Leah and her snarling pack of beasts had interrupted them.

_Talking about it is reasonable, that’s what people do!_

Once Bella had gotten some distance to everything else that had happened, she had realized how uncalled the admittance, which had sparked the whole scenario, had been; she never thought she’d ever have the courage to tell _anyone_ that she wanted to kiss them.

Alice reaction and subsequent… acting was maybe the strangest thing of the whole ordeal. Bella had turned it over and over in her head, analyzed it from every possible perspective and angle – and still she’d not arrived at a conclusive reason for why Alice had kissed her… well the skin of her chest – Bella tried to not get even more flustered by thinking of it with that particular phrasing – and not her lips, as would probably have been the most reasonable thing to do.

Clearly the vampire had wanted it, wanted—

_Me. She… s-she wants **me** …_

But there was just so many things that were still unclear. They needed to talk about this, Bella had never been more convinced of any one single thing in her life than just exactly that. The problem was only that Bella was awkward enough with most normal social interactions – and this strange, utterly foreign, thing she had with Alice – her childhood female friend who happened to be a vampire – was everything but normal. On top of that Alice hadn’t made any obvious attempt to bring it up so far, and that made Bella even more uncertain – what if Alice wanted to pretend like nothing had even happened in the first place?

Sucking in a deep breath, steeling herself Bella decided to throw caution to the wind and get it over with:

“Alice—”

“Bella let’s talk about that when I return to Forks,” Alice interrupted before Bella could get far.

“Did you see what I was gonna ask?” she inquired, suddenly embarrassed.

“Yes,” Alice confirmed and released an airy chuckle, “and I think we should talk about it face to face. Makes it… easier. I don’t think I need any more incentive to run back to you right now, consequences be damned.”

“T-that, uhm,” Bella cleared her throat and tried to keep the weird sort of elation stemming from the vampire’s admittance at bay, “that makes sense.” Alice was the one who could see the future after all.

“It’s late, Bella,” Alice said then, “I know you have something important tomorrow. I’ve only seen a glimpse or two, the Cullen-family are… accompanying you somewhere…?”

Bella glanced at the clock; 11:42 PM. She had to get up very early the next morning to go over to the Cullens’ house. The Quileute-tribe’s council of elders had agreed to a meeting, and they had requested Bella to be present.

She hadn’t talked any more with Leah since the day before when they had texted, but she knew the werewolf-leader would be there also. Bella was nervous, and she had needed to hear Alice’s voice and get away from all the anxiety for a while – and now she was reluctant to hang up.

“Yeah. We’re meeting the Native-tribe’s elders to discuss your possibility of coming back to Forks, under the wing of Carlisle and his family. They’re like… in-charge of the wolves, I guess,” she said, intentionally leaving out the part of the werewolves in question probably being there as well. Like the vampire had so succinctly said: there was no need to give her more incentive to return to Forks prematurely.

“Let us talk more immediately afterwards, yes?”

“Of course, Alice. I really want you back here, I don’t feel safe with you somewhere else.”

“I know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow when we’re done,” Bella promised, and almost added an ‘I love you’ in the end but bit down on it in the last second, for reasons that confounded her later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, technically not Alice back (physically) this chapter either. But. But! I gave you some long-distance fluff, so don’t hate me? <3
> 
> One more hurdle to get past after this – everyone got so much shit to work out – and then……… :3


	20. Negotiation pt. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy, oh boy, I wonder how things with the council goes? *waggles eyebrows*

Bella took her truck to the Cullens’ house early on the next morning. After Carlisle had gotten confirmation from the tribe-council that they would entertain his wish for a meeting to discuss adding a member to their family, the Cullen-patriarch had suggested for Bella to meet up at their place and they'd leave for the location of the meeting together.

Bella barely held it together for the 15-minute drive over to the Cullens. She had decided to skip breakfast, not wanting to risk getting sick from nervousness, but hunger was the thing furthest down on her list of priorities for the moment. The fact that she had been invited to join the meeting was daunting enough, but the knowledge that the wolves would be there as well…? And that they would essentially be discussing Alice’s right to live as normal a life as she could with Bella in Forks? Those issues frankly took precedence over her rumbling stomach.

The vampire-family was waiting for her out on their driveway when she pulled up and parked her truck. Emmett walked up to her as she exited her vehicle and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, while Esme and Carlisle smiled at her sympathetically from a distance. Rosalie seemed to avoid looking at her, clearly not onboard with the family’s plans.

Carlisle and Esme took a separate car, and Bella ended up in the backseat of Rosalie's red BMW M3 convertible. Emmett opted to sit next to her in the backseat, talking and trying to soothe Bella’s worries during the drive over to the meeting spot.

Eventually they pulled over at the end of a narrow, unnamed road deep in the forest after another 15-minute drive or so. Bella shakily got out, followed by Rosalie and Emmett. Carlisle had parked his Mercedes S 55 AMG a short distance ahead of them and was holding Esme’s hand as he waited for Bella and his children to join them.

“Just so we’re completely clear on this: if it comes to having to choose between my family and our life here, and this delusional human, I won’t hesitate to throw her to the wolves. Literally,” Rosalie clarified the moment they caught up to the two elders of the family.

“Rosalie!” Esme reprimanded sternly.

“Thanks,” Bella muttered, not at all surprised at Rosalie’s statement.

“It’s gonna be fine B,” Emmett comforted her, at a loss as how to properly respond his mate’s callous statement.

Bella and the four vampires accompanying her eventually made their way to the location of the meeting; a small clearing seemingly in the middle of the forest – about a ten-minute hike in a brisk pace along a barely visible trampled trail from where they had parked their vehicles.

“Greetings Councilmen,” Carlisle said respectfully as he walked into view of the Quileute-tribe’s elders together with his family and Bella.

The clearing was handmade as a resting spot for hikers: a large cement-ring with a removable steel grill atop it made out the fireplace, and large cut logs laid out around it served as makeshift seating. But judging by the overgrown paths and tall weeds shooting out from the fire station itself, the place hadn’t been used by anyone in a very long time.

“Carlisle Cullen,” Billy Black greeted back, “Isabella.”

Billy Black, Sue and Harry Clearwater, and Quil Ateara III nodded in her direction, although the last one did so reluctantly. Old Quil looked as if he would rather be anywhere else. Billy motioned for Bella to sit down on one of the logs, and as she did Esme walked up to her and sat down as well offering some comfort to the stressed-out human woman.

The added comfort was well-appreciated, especially as four giant wolves came walking out of the foliage around them to stand protectively at the council’s flanks. Esme took Bella’s hand and squeezed it lightly to calm her down, just as the brunette almost bolted up from her sitting position and ran.

The largest of the wolves – the silvery one that Bella now knew was Leah – glanced apprehensively at Bella but made no move to approach her.

“Now, state your business,” Billy Black directed towards Carlisle. His slightly gruff voice held a sort of majestic quality that Bella had never picked up on before.

“My family intends to take in another member of our kind; a vampire wishing to permanently convert to our diet and way of life. This vampire is linked to the human Isabella Swan, which is why she is present here. Because of the treaty and the relatively good relationship between our two factions we wished to discuss this with you first before making the plan a reality,” Carlisle explained.

Old Quil’s expression successively clouded over as Carlisle spoke. Bella would have assumed that the councilmembers would have been brought up to speed on the situation by Billy after they were invited to the meeting, but that didn’t appear to have been the case judging by their reactions. Harry Clearwater looked about as angry as Old Quil, and Sue Clearwater looked more worried than anything else, focused on Bella when her role in the situation was hinted at. Billy Black’s expression was strained, lips drawn in a thin line and a heavy frown on his forehead. The wolves around the elders shuffled restlessly.

“This is an affront to—the Treaty doesn’t give your _family_ permission to recruit and bring more of your kind onto these lands—” Old Quil began.

“Pardon me for the interruption. The Treaty indeed doesn’t explicitly permit this, but it doesn’t forbid it either. Which means that it can’t exert any authority here. We,” Carlisle stated confidently and motioned to everyone gathered, “will have to reach an understanding through compromise.”

“You should be ashamed by your absolute disregard for our traditions and legacy, but of course a creature such as you can't possibly feel enough shame t—”

“If it wasn’t for my father’s absolute _respect_ for human life, and for your tribe in particular, you wouldn’t be here Old- _timer_ ,” Rosalie said in warning, which immediately quieted the upset older man.

Old Quil’s father, Quil Ateara II, had been part of the pack that entered into the Treaty with the Cullen-family in the first place, back in 1936 – and had the Cullens been of an entirely different disposition and decided to wipe out the pack then, none of the council-members would likely have been standing in front of them now in 2019, having never been born.

The four wolves present growled in warning, interpreting Rosalie’s words as a threat. Rosalie and Emmett mimicked their aggressive outburst with their own growls; the former more viciously than the latter – and Bella’s heart practically flew up in her throat.

Her body subconsciously tensed – ready to run for her life when the vampires and wolves would inevitably fall upon each other and rip each other to pieces.

She already knew she had an uncanny ability to consistently disregard life-threatening danger even if it stared her straight in the eyes – as had happened multiple times during the last few months. But she had to admit that this was another, different, extraordinary feat of her mind: while the sole focus of her attention lately had been the wolves and the very obvious threat they posed to anyone judging by their size and… well, _shape_ , she’d seemingly discounted the fact that the members of the family she was coasting along with were also supernatural monsters. They didn’t _look_ like it.

The ‘monster’-part was less applicable in the Cullens’ case, but to see Emmett – someone who had become quite dear to her – so bluntly peel his lips over his teeth and let out a growl, crouched and ready to strike, served as an unwelcome eye-opener. Then his growl tapered off into a gurgling hiss, and Bella suddenly found herself chilled her to the bone.

Esme left her side – and she very nearly grabbed at the mother’s coat to make her stay – and walked over to her children, urging them to calm down.

“My daughter may be blunt in her words, but what she says is true. The least you could do is listen to us and entertain our suggestion,” Carlisle said diplomatically.

“This is absurd—” Quil started again.

“Quil, quiet down. This is not the time nor place,” Billy said sternly and put a hand on Quil’s lower arm, unable to reach his shoulder from his wheelchair-bound position. Quil glared at him but quieted down.

“My family has done nothing to give your tribe a reason to doubt our sincerity or intentions, this you must agree to, no?”

“That is true, but we don’t know if that is because of genuine goodwill, or simply because you have been kept in check by the presence of our wolf-descended defenders.”

“Like my daughter said, had we been of a different… predilection when we met your grandfather Ephraim and his pack, we could have killed them and the entire tribe had we wanted to—" Carlisle began. The wolves snarled angrily, their slobbering maws on full display at the perceived threat of Carlisle’s words.

“But we were not,” the vampire hurried to supply, “We wish to coexist with humans, with your tribe, with the pack. My family-members chose a diet of animal-blood decades ago, and I chose one almost four centuries ago because I couldn’t stomach the thought of snuffing out human lives for my own enjoyment and fulfillment. This has become true for the intended new addition to our family as well.”

The largest silver-grey wolf barked angrily, her hot breath puffing out in a cloud of fog in the dewy air of the forest, as she once again set her attention on Bella’s quivering form.

“That is not what has been reported to our council from the pack’s Alpha,” Harry Clearwater spoke out.

“Yes. I am sure her red eyes did not go unnoticed by your Alpha and the pack. But I assure you that she wishes to turn her life around – much for her own sake, but even more so for Bella and for the humans all around us. She just never knew it was possible.”

“Excuse me if I doubt that,” Harry said, “It is very easy to choose not to kill people. I call bullshit on that one,” he said to his fellow councilmembers.

“For our kind it really isn’t. If our diet consists of human blood and we don’t kill when feeding, that human runs a very great risk of either succumbing to the wounds – suffering horribly in the process, I may add – or turning into a vampire themself. Steering away from human blood takes great discipline because of how much of a temptation it holds for us. It’s ingrained instinct; I dare say as much – if not more – as protecting your ancestral lands is instinct to the wolves—"

The dark grey wolf next to Leah barked angrily, spittle flying from it’s maw, incensed at being compared in any way to the blood-drinkers they all so despised. Bella wasn’t sure who the angry wolf was as a human, but she could hazard a reasonable guess. Carlisle wasn’t deterred by the canine’s angry outburst:

“On top of all that, my family’s diet is frowned upon by most other members of our society, because it is considered a weakness. If they even know about it, in the first place. In fact, as soon as Bella’s vampire was made aware that animal blood could sustain her, she didn’t hesitate to try it. That should vouch for something.”

“’Bella’s vampire’?!” Old Quil seethed, practically choking from rage, “Hell will freeze over before I agree on letting more of your kind onto these lands!”

The wolves echoed the older council-member’s sentiment by angry snuffles and barks, crouching down aggressively and trying to intimidate the vampire-family into submission. Bella swallowed anxiously and raised a trembling hand, unsure of the code of conduct for wanting to address the Quileute tribe’s elders but wishing to make her opinion heard. Her raised hand caught Sue Clearwater’s attention:

“Yes, Bella?” the Clearwater-matriarch inquired.

“Uh, p-permission to speak? I feel like I might have something to add t-to this,” the human woman said, barely keeping her voice from shaking.

Sue’s strained expression softened a bit at the uncertainty and nervousness visible on the young woman in front of her – whom had grown up with her daughter during their respective first years in this life, whom she had cooked for, cared for, and doted upon during her visits to Forks after Charlie’s and Renée’s divorce.

“You can speak,” she encouraged.

Bella swallowed nervously, her unease fueled by the curious looks of Billy and Harry and the Cullens, the angry look on Old Quil’s face and the large intense eyes of the wolves all turned on her.

“I feel like… I mean, I’m sorta guilty about all this, because all of you are in this situation in the first place because of me,” she began to apologize, “I never wanted any of this to happen, not really. I just wanted to mind my own business with Alice.”

Leah growled in her wolf-form at the mention of the vampire’s name, and Bella shot her a defiant look.

“I… I fell in love with her, with… a vampire. This, our relationship, isn’t some sudden thing. Or a fling. I’ve known her for almost 12 years. I’ve only known what she is for the past three months but finding out didn’t take away my appreciation for her. Now that I’m old enough to put words to what she makes me feel, I’ve realized that I love her.”

It was easier to tell them that they’d fallen in love – which she supposed, in essence, was true – than launching into an explanation of the mating-bond, considering she knew very little on the subject and the reaction to that was bound to be disastrous.

Quil, Harry and Billy scowled at her explanation, and Sue mostly looked bothered and concerned on her behalf, but Bella shouldered on:

“The fact remains that she will be part of my life from this point on. Whether that is here in Forks, or somewhere else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that my intentions are to move away from Forks as soon as I have my high school diploma. Forks is a nice and peaceful town – at least appearance-wise – but it holds nothing for me. I don’t want to live here longer than I have to right now, and Alice will follow me wherever I go.”

“And then?”

“Uh, what?”

“What are your intentions?” Sue dug on.

The silvery wolf gave another loud growl and walked off into the surrounding trees.

“That’s… a lot to ask. I wanna go to college. Maybe in Seattle, or somewhere on the east coast. Other than that, I dunno. I want to be happy, and Alice makes me happy.”

“Bella, I believe they want to know if you ever intend to be… turned into one of us,” Carlisle supplied.

Realization dawned on Bella, and she blanched. She and Alice had never talked about it; Bella wasn’t even sure how one was turned into a vampire. Based on logic and a few bits of conversation that she’d picked up on here and there, it had something to do with a vampire-bite – but any details as far as the mechanics and after-effects of that very likely bite was unknown to her. Becoming like Alice had never been something she had actively lusted after; everything was still too fresh and thinking about an ordinary future as an _ordinary_ human was scary enough in its own right.

“Oh. Uh, I haven’t really thought about that. We’ve never talked about it. Alice has never asked me to or in any way attempted to convince me one way or the other.”

“That’s bullshit!” Leah called out angrily as she walked out of the shelter of greenery, clad in large shorts and a shirt. Bella hadn’t even noticed that she had walked off a minute earlier.

“Leah…” she sighed tiredly.

“That fucking bloodsucker can’t wait to sink its teeth into you and either drain you dry or turn you into another unnatural walking corpse!”

“You know what, I’ve had it with your blatant hostility towards Alice and complete disregard for my will. You have _no_ clue what is going on in my life, and you haven’t even bothered to find out – _genuinely_ find out – since I came back. Too preoccupied with your freaking crusade against her!”

Leah shook violently, clenching her jaw and fists tightly.

“I am protecting you Bella! From your own stupidity, if nothing else! Whether you see and admit to that or not!”

“ _Wow._ That’s rich,” Bella said, deeply angered and disappointed by Leah’s cold, harsh words. Leah caught up to what she’d let slip in the heat of the moment and frowned with regret.

“If that’s the way you feel about me, you can actually fuck right off! I haven’t asked for your protection.”

“Because you’re too wrapped up in this to see things clearly!”

“No! Because I already have the protection I need. From Alice! She has been protecting me for 12 years, Leah, most of them without my knowledge – she’s even killed her own kind to protect me! And never _once_ asked for anything in return!”

Leah’s eyes flashed angrily, and she stepped towards Bella. Carlisle and his family reflexively tensed next to the human.

“Girls, calm down,” Sue urged while everyone else watched the situation unfold apprehensively.

“She’s not the fucking angel you make her out to be!” Leah screamed.

“Leah, settle down!” Sue reprimanded her daughter, angry at Leah’s inflammatory, goading language and how it didn’t help the situation in the slightest.

Leah closed her eyes and drew a deep breath.

“Like you are?! You’re a freaking oversized, rabid dog apparently hellbent on destroying my life!” Bella shouted angrily – and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Leah’s eyes snapped open for just a brief microsecond before her entire body exploded into a furry mess of limbs to the sound of ripped fabric.

Carlisle had been prepared for the possibility of the shifter losing control of her wolf as her anger increased, and stepped forward to pull Bella back just as Leah’s body expanded and contorted into a quadrupedal animal the size of an SUV. Bella couldn’t stifle a scream of fright, and even the tribe’s elders pulled further back from Leah as her ripped clothing sailed through the air to settle on the mossy ground together with her new large and heaving form. Leah’s lips were pulled over her teeth in an animalistic sneer, a large tongue licking over them, as if prepared to lunge at any moment. She was breathing heavily – her breath puffing out into big foggy clouds from her large snout.

“Who the fuck are you to talk about control?!” Bella shouted as soon as she had regained her bearings, still held in Carlisle’s arms. He hesitantly released her when she began to struggle, lest she hurt herself on his rock-solid body.

“You can’t even keep that beast under wraps – you’ve almost killed me THREE times now Leah! So far you’ve proven a lot more dangerous than Alice!”

“Take a lap Leah,” Billy said, his voice brokering no argument. Leah growled defiantly.

“ _Now_ ,” the tribe Chief reinforced, and Leah’s frame _swayed_ and faltered. She stepped back and quickly disappeared into the foliage. The three other wolves remained, alternating between cowering at the Alpha as she shouldered past them, or posing threateningly to the vampires.

“We’re sorry you had to witness that,” Billy began, directed at Bella.

“It’s not like it’s the first time. I bet she hasn’t told you that she almost ended up killing me when she chased me and Alice through the Park?”

“She mentioned that you were present…”

“Yeah, but she was feet away from ripping both me and Alice to shreds. And when they fought, Leah didn’t seem to care that she nearly decapitated me by sending Alice flying towards me. She’s the one out of control here!”

“She didn’t mention that, no,” Harry said, eyes and tone hard.

“I have never been that afraid in my life.”

“The transformation – when our shifters awaken the magic in their blood and phase for the first time – makes them angry. The magic is bound to their anger, an ancestral anger if you will, in response to how our ancestors were slaughtered by the Cold Ones with a burning passion, how they trespassed on our lands and brought our tribe to near-extinction. But that is no excuse for the poor conduct Leah has displayed,” Sue explained.

“Listen. I’ll be in Forks for another two years, tops. After that I will move away, and I will be with Alice regardless – somewhere that Leah can’t intervene. Somewhere she can’t follow.”

The elders glanced between each other, clearly disliking Bella’s bold statement.

“At least if she’s here – committed to the Cullens philosophy of sparing humans, living with them, and following every tenant stated by the treaty – you have a way to keep her responsible for her actions, correct?”

“Do you have any idea what you’re asking us, Isabella Swan?” Billy asked the girl.

“Yes. I’m asking for a chance.”

“Billy! The Treaty!” Quil exclaimed.

“The Treaty mentions nothing of our family growing in size. It explicitly forbids us from turning any human in the area into a vampire, or otherwise hurting or killing one. But Alice was not turned by anyone in my family, in fact I’m the only member of our family that have met her,” Carlisle said.

“This is an affront to our ancestors! Taha Aki is turning in his grave, _William_ Black!” Quil warned and waved his arms exasperatedly in Councilman Black’s face.

“The fact remains that the Cullens have done nothing to make us doubt their intentions, not now and not in 1936 when they could have easily vanquished our entire tribe. Harry and Quil, if you will please, go fetch the original copy of the Treaty from where it is kept and bring it here.”

“B-but…!” Harry tried.

“As this tribe’s de facto Chief, I order you to,” Billy said tersely. It was clear that he disliked using the veto-power that came with Chiefhood in the old days to order around his council of elders.

Today, the title of Chieftain of the Quileute-tribe was but a ceremonial thing – every representative on the official, governmental council in the community was democratically elected by its citizens these days. But this shadow-council of sorts – existing without the knowledge of any official representative – tasked with guarding the tribe’s innermost secrets and power-checking the pack of Spirit-warriors whenever there was one, operated by the old ways. Bloodline matters.

Next followed an awkward and stilted 30 minutes. Leah returned, barely sparing Bella a glance before rounding up her pack of wolves to the side of the gathering and clearly communicating strategy with them.

Quil and Harry returned with a dark polished wooden box about 12 by 12 inches in size, with intricately carved figures of howling wolves adorning it. They motioned for Bella and Carlisle to step forward, and Leah came up from behind the two older men to flank their side.

Harry unclasped the metal hasp on the box and opened the lid, revealing a thick glass cover just under it. And resting on the fabric-covered bottom of the box, below the glass, was a yellowed and aged piece of paper, written in thick cursive black ink and signed by an Ephraim Black and a Carlisle Cullen.

“This is the Treaty,” Billy explained, more for Bella’s than Carlisle’s benefit.

Carlisle nodded staunchly, remembering the exact wording of it despite not having seen it for over 82 years. Bella couldn’t hold back an awed gasp at the privilege of being allowed to see such a meaningful artifact of the Quileute-tribe with her own eyes.

“I trust you remembered all the tenets, Carlisle Cullen?” Billy asked sternly.

“I do, sir,” the worldly vampire said with respect, “I never forgot them. And my family and I are fully committed to honor it for the rest of our existence. The possibility of coexisting peacefully with society and the community around us means a lot to us.”

“Isabella, do you have a way to contact your… friend?” Billy asked. By the way Leah’s massive head whipped towards the wheelchair-bound man she hadn’t been expecting that question.

“Yes...?” Bella answered uncertainly.

“I think it best that she sees this Treaty with her own eyes,” Billy said. All four wolves growled menacingly, again crouching down into the defensive posture they had subconsciously let up from during the wait for the two elders to return with the Treaty.

“You mean for her to come here? Now?”

Bella feared that it was a trap, that Billy and his council would sic the wolves on Alice as soon as she showed up.

“Yes. I think we should meet her, if she aims to reside in the Forks area for the foreseeable future. And to bear witness to her vowing to commit to this treaty.”

“I… I don’t want her to get hurt. P-please understand—” Bella pleaded, praying that the deal wouldn’t fall through just because she didn’t dare bring Alice here.

“Leah and her pack will not attack her unless given reason to; I am in command of the pack and I guarantee that. You are asking a lot of our tribe and pack, the least we could ask for back is the benefit of the doubt that no harm will come to your friend if she behaves herself.”

“Billy—Councilman Black, I-I don’t think… she doesn’t exactly have a good track-record with the wolves—”

“Bella’s friend is not as… mild-mannered as my family, not yet,” Carlisle intervened, much to Bella’s relief, “Our animal-diet makes it easier for us to control our instincts and emotions; Alice has not yet reached that level of inner calm.”

“The way I understood it she has been eating animals since she left Forks?”

“Yes, but that is only four days. She is over 100 years old; breaking such an old instilled pattern of behavior takes longer than four days. It would—”

“If she can’t control herself, she shouldn’t be anywhere close to Bella or Forks in the first place. If she’s to reside here, she will bump into the wolves at some point and be expected to maintain her composure,” Billy argued, “If she ends up attacking anyone here, she will only have proven Quil, Harry, and the pack correct – and justly deserved destruction. I will discuss our stance on the subject with my fellow councilmen, and ask that all of you leave for the time-being – we want to conduct our discussions in peace without anyone listening in.”

Said and done; the Cullens brought Bella back to their parked cars and entered them. The family of vampires were respectful that way; they had no intention of trying to eavesdrop on the elders’ discussions.

Emmett began to snicker to himself a few minutes after he had seated himself next to Bella in the backseat of Rosalie’s car again.

“What?” Bella asked anxiously; she was high strung from the recent negotiations.

“I can’t believe you called Leah a rabid dog,” he managed, trying to keep his mirth under wraps.

The situation they were in was a less than ideal one in which to tease Bella, but he just couldn’t help himself. Bella gave him what she hoped was a withering glare, and was just about to call him out on his apparent lack of social grace when Rosalie spoke up:

“Ballsy. But stupid.”

“Huh,” Bella offered, taken completely by surprise from Rosalie’s backhanded compliment. She figured that was the best she’d get compliment-wise from the icy woman – at least at this point in their very strained relationship – and decided to clamp down on her objections.

“You know you’re badass when Rosalie calls you ‘ballsy’,” Emmett said and wiggled his eyebrows humorously in Bella’s direction. Rosalie scoffed from the front seat.

“Uh, thanks Rosalie,” Bella mumbled.

“Don’t make it weird. And don’t get used to it,” Rosalie replied. Emmett chuckled good-naturedly.

“The council called Carlisle,” Rosalie said then, her and Emmett’s attention perking up at something that Bella’s human ears couldn’t hear.

“They have decided to let your… friend come back here,” she continued, apparently puzzled at the council’s decision.

“Another shifter on the Reservation just turned,” Emmett supplied. He didn’t have much time to add anything else before Carlisle was knocking on the backseat window next to Bella.

“I heard Emmett and Rosalie brought you up to speed. They have decided to allow Alice back in the area, but she can’t step out of line even once. They want one month to train their wolves and hone their battle-skills should Alice prove unable to control herself and need to be destroyed. They’re six wolves in the pack now, and it’s possible that more will shift as well in response to Alice settling here. I think we will have to settle for this deal, Bella. It’s not what we asked for and not what we expected, but it’s a much better outcome than the alternative. Know that if it comes to a fight because of any type of indiscretion on her part we are severely outnumbered and I won’t urge anyone in my family to fight for your cause – even if I would do my best to aid you, myself,” he said when Bella had rolled down the window.

“I… I don’t know what to say. _Thank you_ ,” Bella proclaimed, at a loss as how to express her gratitude for the Cullens’ willingness to sacrifice their own welfare for her and Alice’s sake, “I don’t know how I’ll ever pay you back.”

“I’m not doing this in hopes of gaining something, Bella, and neither is my family. We just have a very strong sense of right and wrong, and we wanted to help make this situation right. Besides,” the doctor said and smiled warmly, “the more the merrier. I have found that ties of friendship and family is the only thing that truly remedies the… boredom of a life as lengthy as this one can be. I’d be happy to call you and Alice friends, and maybe even family sometime in the future.”

Bella couldn’t hold back tears at the kind man’s selfless and affectionate words, and sniffled.

“Don’t get snot on the seat,” Rosalie snarked from the front of the car.

Bella glanced in the rearview mirror and got a quick glimpse of Rosalie’s face before the blonde vampire hurriedly looked away; none of her trademark scowl was present, instead she looked a bit touched – possibly even admiring her father and his words and the immense amount of empathy contained within him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it’s safe to say that we might have entered the last lap of the story now. This lap is just like extra-long, I guess, cuz we still got a few chapters left – woooo!
> 
> Guess who’ll be back (for real and permanently) next chapter?


End file.
